I remember in the original 1990’s NASCAR Racing game, I discovered a glitch where if I managed hit an AI car into the outer wall a certain way while driving backwards, it would launch said AI car backwards at some incredible rate of speed which could make for some spectacular wrecks.

Anyhow, that’s what I spent most of time doing.

I’d at least start them with something simple like Paint or Notepad. Once they have that down, then you can throw the disaster that is the MS Office file save dialog at them.

With the N64, it helps if you can hook it up to a TV from around that era too. Games like Goldeneye look terrible on a modern LCD. I had that experience myself - “Man, I know I’m used to modern games now, but I don’t remember these games looking this shitty”. Then I dragged out my old CRT and hooked it up, and instantly it was “Now this is how I remember these games looking like”.

I’m not saying that old hardware is useless. I make good use out of old hardware too. I have an old i5 Dell from about 2012 running ZoneMinder, a Phenom II system from around 2009 that I use a Linux server, an even older Core 2 Duo system that’s a glorified MP3 player, and even a very early 2000’s Pentium III that I use for a router (sadly I’m going to have to retire it from these duties soon - it can barely handle a 100 mbps DSL connection, and it’s too old and outdated to run the modern router distributions).

However, for every one of those computers I have another one like it sitting in a closet plus a few extras. All the geeks and tinkerers I know are also swimming in old hardware. If I really wanted to get rid of this stuff, I’d have a hard time giving it away. Economically, this stuff is worthless. The supply greatly exceeds the demand(*)

(*) well, except maybe the Pentium III… it’s old enough now that retro gamers may be interested…

If all she uses the computer for is playing Sims 4, another option is just let her continue to use Windows 10. If she’s running it through Steam she’s probably got another 3-4 years before that stops working.

That’s true, but the supply vastly outstrips the demand. They may make great Linux machines, but the majority of 10-15 year old computers have little to no economic value.