As a blanket statement, this isn't true. We've had full DMD games (ie. JD, with full audio) running completely smoothly on small computers with less power and less memory than an original R-Pi. As always, performance is implementation and feature-set dependent. Of course, with the availability of more powerful computers now, there's little reason to try to use an original R-Pi, but some people enjoy optimizing their projects for extremely lightweight processors.

Pinball logic barely taxes even the smallest processors. It's typically audio and video that cause performance problems, but there are lots of advanced libraries and optimization tricks for improving performance. Some like to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a processor as they can, while others would rather spend a few more dollars on something more powerful. To each their own.

Regarding RacingPin's WW2 project... great theme and interesting layout. Having the whole family involved sounds like a huge win. Enjoy the process!

- Gerry
https://www.multimorphic.com