They can just run a windows VM which shouldn't require too much memories for the kinds of games they want to play.

No VM solution I know of supports 3D-accelerated graphics. VMware Workstation used to, but they removed it years ago because it was a security risk (direct access to 3rd-party drivers on the host).

VMs are useless for most gaming.

For games up to around the late 90s, and if you have a real beast of a machine, full emulation such as with PCem is the best option.

I haven't used a VM for gaming recently so I didn't know they don't support graphics anymore. That's a bummer!

It doesn't. Case in point is my spare late 00's laptop running mint and early 00's / late 90's games. Some (Age of Wonders 1) don't work at all under wine/proton. Others (Age of Wonders SM, dosbox games, Majesty) technically work but keep hitting snags like midi just flat out not working, display resolution being read and set incorrectly, visual artifacts. Everything tested worked perfectly fine under Win7 and Win10.

Age of Wonders 1 used to work. That patch that you need to get it running on Win10+ was originally made for Wine: https://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?actio...

Is that not sufficient these days? I might take another look; this is one of those games that I intend to keep running one way or another until I die.

Aight so when using Wine, AoW1 just instantly fails silently upon launch, no error message to see. When using proton it technically works - clicking randomly I launched the tutorial, judging by the sounds - but the screen is black all the time and shutting down alt-f4 it throws an error:

Exception EWin32Error in module VCL30.dpl at 00010E4F

Win32 Error. Code 1400. Invalid window handle.

It isn't I'm afraid. I'll see if I get any crash log or report that could help later in the evening.