I am not a gamer and never really was, but a default config of Win95 made a lot of RAM available for DOS apps, as I recall. (And I was a serious expert in this area, 30-35 years ago.)
I used to do very basic memory optimisation on my Win95 boxes, just because I could with minimal mental effort, and then my DOS sessions had 630 kB or so free.
What I confess I did not investigate was DOSSTART.BAT and optimising what RAM was left when Windows was in "DOS mode".
Unless you wanted to play a DOS game. Then the fighting between DOS and Win 95 for the 640k began.