Interestingly enough, I sometimes enjoy games that could be considered "primeval" in their mechanics, like the original Ultima.

Seriously, by modern standards, and even taking into account indie games, Ultima 1 is *really* strange, both in terms of gameplay mechanics and what the game asks you to do to complete it.

when someone says the n word

Sure, it's basically Akalabeth with a little extra dressing to fill out the disk.

The Sims on 3.x? That'd be... quite a feat.

(Ultima 1 spoilers within)

Except that Akalabeth:
* Didn't have explorable towns and castles
* More importantly, did not have princesses to rescue from the kings of those castles
* Did not have signs or vehicles
* Did not require, or even allow, you to become a space ace by going into outer space and playing an action minigame

Ultima 1 still has signs of Akalabeth, specifically with dungeons and quests that require you to kill specific monsters within them, but everything else is new, and much of it is still rather bizarre.

Ultima 2 also has some strange aspects to it, like how you have to steal at certain points. I don't think any other Ultima game, at least up through 7, requires stealing to complete. (Well, unless you count rescuing princesses in Ultima 1 by killing the jester for a key, unlocking the princess's jail cell (hope you have the right key!), and then fleeing past attacking guards.)

Final conclusion, after that parenthetical note: Ultima 1 makes absolutely no sense.

I used to Game from NES Days to PS3 Days...

Today, I tend to focus mostly on the PS3 Generation up to like 2017,
something like that. I most deffinately dislike anything afterwards,
& I no longer focus on Consoles anymore, & unless the Games work
without a Compatibility Mode on the 1st try? I probably don't care to play it.

I'm not a big fan of Windows Compatibility Mode with older Games,
because i've never gotten it to work at all.

Quake 3 Arena still works with Windows 10, so I guess that would
be my cutoff switch right there. Is this is as far back as I go?

I know I no longer play 2-D Side Scrollers & 2-D RPG's anymore.
If I were to play a Beat 'Em Up, it would have to be Emulated.

You should be. Compatibility mode saved a lot of games.
If it's not a DLL that's missing or that has been changed, the compatibility mode solves most "but it worked on XP!!" problems.
Also some of the compatibility settings (like disabling fullscreen optimizations) can help, if the game engine performed some strange access.
Windows did change over the years, not just it's runtimes. Direct access to hardware was removed with Windows Vista, certain directories have access protection, standards have been changed, some functions in the kernel now behave differently (bugfixes, enhancements). With the compatibility settings, MS does quite a good job keeping old solftware running.

When I have problems with a game, after making sure that all runtimes are installed, there are usually these steps that solve most problems.
1. Compatibility mode, maybe also some of the additional compatibility settings.
2. dgVoodoo 2 for 3D games from mid 90s to eraly 2000s.
2.1 Optionally just DirectDraw for 2D games from the same time.
3. Install a video codec pack like K-Lite, some old games need it, they rely on codecs that every game had back then.
4. Keep a DInput.dll from Windows 8 at hand, it has been changed significantly in Windows 10, some games crash if a XBox Controller is connected.
5. indirectsound to restore surround sound for some games which otherwise only offer stereo.
5.1 can also be used the other way around. I have one 2D adventure game that does not handle surround sound properly, the voicess come from behind the camera. Set indirect sound to stereo, so everything is played on the front.

People love to hate on Microsoft but it's frankly amazing to me that 99% of old PC games work on modern Windows. Some of that is obviously programs like ScummVM, but still.

any pay to win game is where i walk away

Well, scummvm and emulators I don't really count, same for virtual machines for a 16 bit core that allows to run Windows 95 games, also remakes are out of the competition.

But the number of games that run natively is nonetheless amazing.

With a few tweaks we can still get most 30 year old Windows games from the XP era to run, even oldies like Jedi Knight or even Descent 3. No gaming console comes even close to that.
The downside is that the consoles get more remakes :)

So I guess you aren't into arcade games, right?

(Arcade games were the original "pay-to-win" games, as you could essentially have infinite lives in many of them by credit feeding.)

That's a take I would expect to read on some modern day gaming journo site/blog.

I dislike pay to win just as any form of cheating, while I really do like arcade games. Credit-feeding is like robbing yourself in more than one way. Did you ever felt any accomplishment by credit-feeding?
Who would care for such hollow "victory" where you spend 20 credits to bruteforce through the game. Nobody would stand around you to cheer you on as if it was a perfect 1cc or high-score run.
Pay to play? Sure. Pay to win? Hardly.

If we take things out of context, we can make it fit any narrative we wish. Another thing is how loosely one interprets the concept of pay2win.

Infinite continues/lives without consequences are lame since arcade games are designed to be intense, compact experiences. You don't go further by adding level select and practice mode, you start with having them available out of the box as qol feature. Stage select when implemented right with some prior requirements for stage unlocks, thus having a sense of progression for the player is legit. Restrictions in place e.g. for clearing the last stage picked from stage select shouldn't count as a game clear in terms of progression, leaderboards/trophies/cheevos, etc. That's another topic in itself.

Way too many games made nowadays label themselves as arcade games, but they only resemble them superficially, like a very distant, almost faded memory. Just like with credit-feeding/infinite lives, catering to ultracasual audience that only wants to plow through it once no matter what will only result in reviewbombs by the very same people, complaining that your game is just 40minutes long. Meanwhile the core arcade audience would then likely ignore it completely as being too casual/shallow/whatever. I remember you are making an arcade game of sorts yourself, so I wonder how it will turn out. No pressure or anything.

That particular game, if it's the one I'm thinking of:
* Doesn't really have levels or scripted variety.
* Doesn't have an end (unless you count the score overflowing as the end).
* I never implemented limited lives.

So, I think it's different enough from actual arcade games for this discussion to not make sense.

Back in the day, one convention is that, any time you use a continue, your score would reset back to 0. If you have a game where the scoring system is reasonably sound, without infinite point farms, this can be used as an incentive for players to try not to use any continues.

In the modern era, we have achievements on many platforms. One obvious achievement, then, would be to beat the game on a single credit, without using any continues. This gives anyone who cares about achievements an incentive to try to 1cc the game.

(Note that achievement design is a serious issue. There are good achievements (the 1cc achievement could be considered good), and there are bad achievements (like reaching max level in an RPG where doing so isn't feasible, or taking 1st place on an online leaderboard. or beating a long game (time measured in hours) without saving).)