35mm is great up to an 8x10 print. It'll do 11x14 if you don't stand too close. It's 30mp+ of optical resolution.
The thing to remember is that at the time, nobody was scanning, they were doing optical enlargements directly onto printer paper, with 6-element macro-optimized process lenses. That's a much higher-quality optical path than you get out of almost any scanner - drum scans and high-end CCD scans (flextight or similar) can get there but even midrange CCD film scanners struggle with 35mm and your average flatbed photo scanner doesn't stand a chance.
Nowadays digital has entirely displaced this flow - even at a photo lab you will most likely get prints made from scans. And they're much lower quality than contemporary prints would have been.
If they're B+W, try wet-printing those 35mm negatives sometime. Find a local college darkroom and get someone to walk you through split-printing on variable-contrast paper on one or two of your photos. You'll see.
https://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/split-filter-printing...
https://www.35mmc.com/27/04/2020/split-grade-printing-darkro...
But yeah medium format is incredibly easy to produce usable scans, by comparison. With top-end gear you can get just as much resolution off a MF negative as 35mm - you can do optical enlargement to several feet or even a yard+ on the long edge. But it's way way easier to get something usable for a 8x10 print or something off a MF negative than it is 35mm.