I thought I was feeling the same thing, but then the one worry that was stopping me from playing them was alleviated, and now I'm fully enjoying good ol' DOS games. Doom, Blood, Quake, Commander Keen, Bio Menace, Master of Orion, One Must Fall, Civalization...... I've been using a keyboard FAR before a controller, and the keyboard shall forever remain my main method of controlling. Never will it stop. Mouse + Keyboard = Any genre of game masterfully controlled, expeccially with practice. FPS's are infinently easier with a mouse than some stick.
As a note, play Doom. Even the shareware version is long enough to more than occupy you for a few days, and it works near perfectly on win XP. [just make sure to set the music card setting to general midi, sound blaster music suxxorz on win XP for DOS.]
www.dosgames.com has shareware of Doom free download.
You can't tell me that's not awesome.
http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=music&game=DoomAnd that's for the music of the game.
I don't know why, but with that one fear I had gone, I'm absolutely loving these kinds of games. Running around with a gun [or chainsaw. YEE HAW!] blasting zombies around and into pieces, it's such great fun....