The format was slower, and it was better for it at that point in Magic. That is the format that actually got me into "Vintage".
As some people have brought up there are some weird problems with rule changes though that may cause the format to be substantially different, and the restricted list still had some lag effects from it being "Type I and Type II" with a combined list. So I think the restricted list would / should be dramatically different for such a format.
I think Anti-Fish, which was just UR fish with River Boas, was actually the best deck of that time, but Hulk Smash was very powerful and so was Drain into random big drops.
EDIT:
Just to elaborate a bit more on that format at the time from my persepctive, UR Fish could absolutely bury you in card advantage. They not only ran Standstill, but they had Curiosity (an enchant creature!), man-lands, Null Rods, Strip effects, Grim Lavamancer. Daze, Force of Will, and the Hatchling allowed the deck to tap out every turn so they just incrementally gain massive mana usage advantage over the course of the game too. You basically had to take a strict plan of kill their early creatures, AND hit your land drops to stand any chance against them.
I don't recall the combo decks being very good. Storm was somewhat of a boogie man, but it was bad against the best deck (Fish), the restricted list made them fairly inconsistent and you had the sideboard space to devote to them if you wanted to (no Dredge). The other combos did not consistently happen early in the game, and if they did you still had a suite of 8+ counterspell effects in any control list. Occasionally, someone would get the turn 1 Dragon Combo, but you need like a perfect 7 for that.
I thought Shops was also definitely a control deck back then, not much of an aggro deck, as they mostly relied on locking you out of the game. It was a very reliant on Urza's block, whereas now people can tap into about 50 different artifact sets.
If you want a Wheel with this, you are probably going to have to play this and wheel in the same deck.
Playing Wheel of Misfortune for 0 would be fun to force your opponent to discard their hand, while mana efficient for the effect, its not that broken though given Mind Twist is a card.
Sure, but I was talking about cards that are actually played.
The biggest blowout is to flash it in response to a Dack Fayden activation, and they discard 2, you get a treasure, and then a creature to attack Fayden.
The format is very saturated with good 3+ drops in control at this point so I don't think it'll have a big impact, but it obviously synergies nicely with Dack Fayden and everything else that combo'ed with Notion Thief / Narset. So there is potential.
Your opponent can kill this immediately though without you being able to recoup value, unlike Narset.
Gaining a billion life off of intervention pact, and then drawing 7?
Accessibility is not the issue online. The decks aren’t that expensive online. Vintage isn’t fun enough, and it doesn’t sell enough product. Vintage Horizons solves both problems.
What kills a format is when it no longer becomes fun. Sitting on MTGO waiting 10+ minutes for a match is not fun.
Hell yes to Vintage Horizons. Give us a cycle of Lotuses. One for each color. Some 1/2 Mana artifact accelerators that are better than Grim Monolith. Go wild.
Give us some non-mana lands back too. Maybe like a red Bazaar of Baghdad, where you discard 3 first and then draw 1.
You can play unrestricted, and restricted versions of the format. Unrestricted allows 4 copies of everything. Restricted allows only 1 copy of anything. Simple.