Why be jealous and only feel bad about it? Let the envy motivate you to create great things! There are a million tiny hobby project ideas out there that you have the power in your hands to actualise.
No one is ever likely to make a living reverse-engineering 30-year-old ROM-flashing utilities, just like no one is likely to make a living figuring out how to convert early-2000s console game data to standard formats, but that kind of hobby project builds skills that are uncommon and useful in certain lines of work.