No modern AAA games have been released this way, but there is at least one game made specifically for libretro (Dinothawr) and a few other games that have been converted into "contentless" libretro cores (Cave Story, Mr. Boom, Rick Dangerous).
The games (or their engines/emulators) would have to be modified to use the libretro API for things like input, rendering, and sound. Though it doesn't look terribly hard to program for, it does tie the game to RetroArch (or another libretro frontend) and possibly limit what the program can do.
I thought I'd also bring up Lutris, which is not only a libretro frontend but also a frontend for numerous other game platforms. It may not have the game console-like UI of RetroArch, but I think if you must have all games under one launcher, it's the best you could hope for.
If you haven't set up this laptop yet, then I'd suggest installing a server-oriented distro like Debian, AlmaLinux, or Ubuntu Server. Those have minimal install options that come without a desktop environment installed, as most servers do not need one. If you'd like to make the install harder for yourself, this might be a good excuse to give Arch Linux or Gentoo a try, as those have the option of a fully manual install. If you'd like, you can install a desktop environment afterwards using the package manager.
If you already have a Linux with a graphical desktop installed, you can configure the system not to automatically start it with
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
. (Do not do this on your main device!) You can re-enable it withsudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
.Regardless, you can then start a graphical session using
startx
, or whatever command is more appropriate for your desktop environment (gnome-session
to start GNOME on Wayland,startplasma-wayland
to start KDE Plasma), or bysudo systemctl start
ing your login screen manager (sddm, gdm, lightdm, etc).