But I wonder if those (ancient) simulators weren't, somehow, not doing a great job in terms of replicating the "flight dynamics" of the real world counterparts of those aircraft, but those of you who flew it could easily anwer that.
When I got my GPL in 1980, one of my instructors was a seasoned 707 captain at TAP. He always told me the best about that aircraft, how great it was to fly - hand fly actually... - and used to compare it a lot to gliders :-)