The old steam gauges certainly force you to keep your situational awareness up to speed and your scan going!
It can get exciting when you're being asked to hold on some fix you're not familiar with and you have to first find out were the hell it is and then how to get there, sometimes it takes more then one chart to figure things out and the cockpit lighting in the jurassic aircraft is not that good either.
Now all you need to make matters really intense is an inexperienced crewmember, an SP77 (or similar) auto-pilot and some inclement weather and you can work your tail off without anything actually going wrong!
what fun!