Oh I can definitely see how comparatively, the Sierra games would be like AAA games compared to many of the even earlier point-and-click games. They do still seem very playable! Just from the cursory previous time I played like maybe 30 minutes of King’s Quest 3, I remember finding it difficult to know what to do or tell what the story was (albeit I was probably 12 haha). I’m interested in revisiting them given that I did really enjoy some other early point-and-clicks like the Monkey Island games, but I assume I’d probably want to use a guide to keep it from being a slog.

What’s cool is the retro gaming handhelds are actually totally legal (in my understanding, at least) because there is no legal issue with distributing emulators, only with distributing roms. RetroArch, Emulation Station, and all of the other open source software that power emulation is all legal. There’s just the big caveat that the easiest way to play games using that software is through piracy. I think it might be settled at this point that if you rip roms yourself and emulate them, that is wholly legal. It would just be an insane amount of work and kind of a dumb thing to do considering that there should literally be no difference between a downloaded rom and a ripped rom.

Ah yeah I can see how the first two Dragon Quests would be too antiquated to enjoy. That’s pretty much how I’m feeling trying to play the first Earthbound for NES. There’s a 25th anniversary rom hack that rebalances the game and updates a lot of the graphics that I think I’m gonna give a try because I really enjoyed Mother 2 and 3 and can tell I’d love Mother 1 if not for the major grinding. Fun fact, the Mother series is named after the John Lennon song from Plastic Ono Band