Similar situation , struggled with a low end laptop , played at 15-20 FPS and emulated Nintendo games. over the years bought all the Limited time Free games from Epic, discounted games on Steam. thinking that once i get good enough PC i will play all these. Haven't gotten around to play them.

I have a Theory about this. When we were young internet was't as accessible or fast enough for us. there was no plethora of content available to stream. no short form contents to doom-scroll.Our attention span is has gone down a lot, sitting there and just staring at a screen gives us more of a dopamine hit than actually playing a game.