I go the other way. When AA/AAA batteries are too weak for high drain devices, I save them for my remote controls. They usually last for months due to the intermittent use and low wattage.
From my knowledge, it's kinda the opposite - when a device first runs out of battery, it's almost always the case that only one of the batteries is truly dead. So if you find that one dead battery and swap it out, you'll be good again for a surprisingly long while
10yo me realized that other sized batteries that were also 1.5v could be used as well if I had enough tape and aluminum foil, so then all the flashlight D batteries around the house started to go missing as well.
I had a plug that went with rechargeable batteries or something, and it was great for a while, but then the connector failed and if I moved at all the gameboy would turn off. very frustrating.
My mom got so frustrated at how often I needed batteries for my walkman, my Gameboy, my other toys, and my little stereo I won at the library, that she replaced all of our batteries with a bunch of rechargeables she bought in bulk. All my friends were so jealous
See....was the other way round for me. My mum had a crippling Tetris addiction when I was 7. So much so that I'd get home from school and every battery in the house would be dead. That year for Christmas all I asked for was batteries.
To be clear, it was my Gameboy and my copy of Tetris.....
NiMH is perfect for an application like this, where the power draw is high but you don't need the batteries to retain charge while in standby for that long, so the high self-discharge rate is irrelevant.
Knew a kid who had siblings all close in age. Their Parents didn't want for money at all, but still bought only one gameboy to share between the siblings. That's just stupidity on the parents' part, to the point of total lack of self preservation!
IE they introduced something to cause conflict instead of spreading it out and causing peace for everyone.