Final Fantasy 6, which is an equally awesome game, although for very different reasons, had a complete makeover and one can download it with new quests, gears, translation, balance, etc.
It's crazy what people will do by passion.
I've never played the Secret of Mana type games, or Mario RPG, or any of a host of other ones.
I think the PSX was an interesting high point for 3D creativity vs graphics. The PS2 started pushing polygon counts such that the creative/artist teams started to blow out and budgets shot up, but then the PS3 and "modern AAA" budgets took over. Large budgets, low risk, more priority on splash graphics than depth.