Sokoban was ported/cloned as "Boxxle" for the Game Boy.  I got it, and that was how I discovered I hate puzzle games as video games.

I can't speak for Gemini's videos as I've never watched his channel.  I can say that I enjoy your videos featuring games I've never played as much as your videos showing games I have played.  Maybe if I was hooked up to a bunch of brain wave monitors it may come out that I enjoy the videos of games I've also played slightly more.  It wouldn't be a great deal more.  The majority of your Let's Play videos for the past year or two I haven't played, but really enjoyed the entire series for all of them.

Roberta Williams once said that the people playing their games were higher IQ people, on average, with money. She basically said that the culture of the gaming wasn't the same when the audience broadened more and products had to appeal to the masses (ie, less intelligent people, on average). Her comments were considered controversial, and she was criticized for making them. But I think she was more than onto something there. Sierra conducted a lot of market research and knew their audience well. Slower paced adventure games and complex simulations are not for people requiring instant gratification.

There's definitaly certain feel of PC gaming for those days at the 90s but I think it's very hard to grasp how it differes from gaming in general those days. For myself I have watched short videos or tidbits about games in many platforms: all nintendos, segas, amiga, C64, spectrum and can feel nostalgic for those games but longer videos I think would have to be about PC gaming. Since PC and Dos WAS my childhood. So I have much stronger connection with Dos gaming, since basically I turned computer on almost every day during those years at some point. Rest of the games in other platforms I played with my friends, cousins etc. in their systems.

I had my first PC in 1999 and I was already 19 y o by that time. As a kid I played C64 and Amiga 500. I remember playing Pirates and Defender of the crown on C64 and both games blew my mind. Defendor of the crown had insane graphics for C64, check it out! Amiga 500 had Space quests 1,2,3,4 it had Monkey island 1,2... Larry... Settlers, Civilization. Kings quest...It kinda felt like having a PC 386 but man I wanted to play quest for glorys so bad. Amiga 500 had great games but PC was like Mt. Everest, specially 486

Money Bags: Beat the Gnome of Zurich vs Wall Street Kid

I have to say that LateBlt's point is mostly a SimAnt-ic point

My first games were Soace wars, Alley Cat and some NBA Championship basketball game, then KQ4

29.38 wow completely new graphics and everything. Same but different

I agree with your conclusions.  The argument "they were only there for nostalgia" is immediately disproven by Shovelware Diggers' mild success: The games covered were more often than not completely unknown by most of the audience.  So they were there to discover, not to relive the past.

When I first got into gaming most people I knew preferred platform over PC gaming because they just wanted to play the games. They didn't want to be technicians too. Steam and GOG have made things a lot easier fortunately but there's still a technical side to it.

Funny, as someone who grew up with a C64 and move on to PC later, and as someone who watches Pixelmusement, I'm not sure why the C64 is remembered now as a mostly action game platform. Because, yes, a lot of games were action based but in my memory the C64 introduced me to a whole lot of other genres like e.g. adventure games (still my favorite) and simulations/strategy, like for example: Flight Simulator II (indeed), Solo Flight, Dam Busters, Seven Cities of Gold, Theatre Europe, Solar System, Elite and Little Computer People.

Here are some of my thoughts:
-Culture-wise: consumer computers were a new thing in the early 80s and PCs were generally seen as complicated, intimidating, expensive, and somewhat boring. The C64 was marketed (here in Europe) as an exciting, affordable family "home computer" that was relatively easy to learn, and also often sold with a joystick. So when kids nagged their (computer illiterate) parents for a computer that's what they went for. Also the amount of available software and people you knew who owned one as well played a role in the decision to buy one.
-In that context, action games were easy to get into for novice players and didn't require reading a (complicated) manual. Especially for kids who weren't native English speakers.
-Age/nostalgia: maybe those most vocal today were younger kids back then while the older generation that was more interested in complex games and applications feel less nostalgia?
-I've noticed when rebuilding my C64 library today that some obscure titles, especially non-English, are not available on the internet.
-Simulations and (graphical) adventures require more of a time investment and can be a bit boring to watch so they make less exciting YouTube content.
-Unlike the PC in the 90s, we didn't have access to BBSes and internet and as far as I remember freeware, shareware, playable demos wasn't a thing. So most games that reaches us (through stores and sneakernet) were either commercially viable titles or 'cool' demos from the demo scene.

Also note that some of us learned how to program and hardware basics on the C64, which was a great stepping stone towards the PC.

Culture is largely the collective expression of the inherent characteristics of a population, and gaming culture is no different. If a population changes or is replaced, then the existing culture will no longer be carried forward. DOS gaming culture was the way it was because the audience was affluent, intelligent, and WHITE. It would be interesting to compare Japanese PC-98 interactive fiction game styles from the era with Sierra and other classic western adventure games.

Crank up an Amiga emulator and try GOBLIIINS

LateBlight isn’t a game. It’s an agricultural simulation. PCs were tools. Nintendo, Sony etc made gaming consoles.

Have you ever dabbled with lemmings.

That was always a fun DOS classic.

Kids, when I was your age Terraria only had 3 minerals and the elevator was already built. And although there were mentions of Dragons, there were no pesky monsters to harass you.