Much of this resonated with me. Most of my early QBASIC games are lost, not because I actively deleted them, but because of simple neglect and indifference. When I made those games, I backed them up on 3.5" floppy disks because that was the best I could do at the time, but when I had access to CD/DVD-writing technology I didn't bother archiving such old works of art that no longer seemed important in my artistic journey. I only got back into making games thanks to the growth of indie dev communities online. But in the interum, all those floppy disks had degraded away, as floppy disks do. Like tears in rain. :V
I still have two games from that time - including the second game I ever made, from 1995 - only because I'd posted their code on a web forum before the death of whichever hard drive I had my old .BAS files on. I'm more careful about backing things up now - even the cringy stuff that seems irrelevant - and even my most recent hard drive failure earlier this year did NOT spell doom for my current collection of unfinished game projects!