I play it with hotas and it works fine. You'll absolutely still want to keep a keyboard and mouse handy though because the RTS/management half of the game is really not that well controlled with a flight stick.

Also European here. They do. Certainly in the shops I've been in. Probably a country thing.

This is NoP at home.

It gets very blurry in the early days of video games. Ahoy made a great video about just that, actually: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc&pp=ygUYYWhveSBlYXJsaWVzdCB2aWRlbyBnYW1l

Basically, there's earlier games than pacman, but what actually constitutes a video game starts to become a much less trivial question.

But we probably all make it onto some list ^^

I agree for the most part. A company holding an iron grip on the game and keep the competitive scene alive as a marketing tactic is a recipe for disaster if we are to take it seriously as a long term sport. A company will not hesitate to shut things down if they unanimously decide they no longer want it to exist.

Regarding whether esports are sports or not is kind of arbitrary. The same as how we call competitive chess and darts and formula 1 sports despite being more mental than physical in nature.

I don't agree with this take at all. Agent Smith was definitely evil, the machines were victims of capitalist exploitation, which they just turned right around on humanity once they took charge.

I suppose that point is mostly explored in the sequels though.