I have an old Raspberry Pi 1 (!) still going strong with Batocera Linux running NES, SNES and Mega Drive (Genesis) emulators.
I’m looking for easy multiplayer games that can be played with a 5yo. Non violent and ideally co-op, bonus points if somewhat educational.
Super Mario by far IMO, basically all of the games.
5yo is probably still too young to understand Zelda.
I’m still too young to understand Zelda 2, and I played it when it came out!
IMO I think it’s less “understand” and more “find a way cheese those bullshit Iron Knuckle fights”. I’ve completed Zelda 2 a few times. Those are still torture and terribly un-fun.
I started it again a few years ago thinking “Now that I’m older, this won’t be so hard.”
Even by cheesing save states, and googling the tricky bits, I still got stuck in the Death Mountain caves.