It's not about MCAS, it's about using the manual trim wheels at high speed, while pulling on the control column, with the aircraft severely out of trim nose down. And it's not just MCAS that can bring the aircraft in that situation.
And from what I've seen in Mentour's YouTube video, where he attempts to replicate that condition in a level D simulator for the 737 NG, the old simulator replicated the condition quite well.
So it seems the issue is specific to the MAX simulators. One requirement for a level D simulator is that it should accurately provide force feedback for the pilot's flight controls through a system called "control loading".