No love for the aarch64 eh?
Aw, dangit.
You are in an environment where the downvote button exists as a self-validation/relief method rather than flagging off-topic/unrelated/low-effort/etc content as "bad".
The majority are simpletons which (also) love simple stuff. That's why.
One word:
Recall.
For when you are running an "obscure" distro and/or sbc (like say, dietpi and orange pi zero 3).
I've got a rpi 4 w/ 2 GiB of ram and it runs fine.
1- Clone this repo: https://github.com/NicoD-SBC/armbian-gaming
2- Run armbian-gaming.sh
3- Choose "install retropie"
4- Run "emulationstation" after installing
Orange pi zero 3 is arm-based and can be really viable for daily usage if you are into tinkering.
In a serious tone:
Attempt to do a minimal yet optimized install instead of a standard one while making it fully functional.
Just use whatever you want and never update.
If the game offers me a possibility of doing (something) for a (reward) -- I will do it if it is fun and engaging, not because of the reward alone. Which (somewhat) makes "the game play me", but hey... this can (also) be applied at every other situation in real life as well.