I don't know exactly how much code reuse Sawyer had going back then, but if you've ever played Transport Tycoon (or more likely the open source version around today, OpenTTD) then you know that the interface and graphics are extremely similar. So it's not like he started from scratch each game with nothing but a hot spinning disc and a magnetized needle.
But yeah, the main reason to put up with all the modern framework bloat is the ever-ephemeral promise of being able to write your thing once and have it ported to run anywhere with minimal to no further effort.