aight I'm in the mood to talk abt emulation so here's a mini-thread on it

emulation involves running older software, typically games, through a piece of software called an emulator; the emulator acts a bit like a translator by translating native code run by an old device to that used on the host device which could be your PC, phone, console etc

emulation tends to be focused on two areas:
1) Accuracy - how accurate (true) is the response produced by an emulator vs old hardware? Less accurate, less true but less overhead and CPU intensive
2) Levels - are ya replicating the response (high-level) or behaviour (low-level)

As a general ROT: low-level emulators (LLEs) require more power to run and are often more accurate due to the higher overhead required to run em vs HLEs but this isn't always the case, so don't assume HLE =/= fine w your device

Single-thread performance is the biggest thing if not the ONLY thing you should be concerned abt when running emulators => most emulators still rely on heavy single-core performance so having 8c/16t won't make much of a difference unless the emulator uses loadsa threads (RPCS3)

As a result, Intel has been typically the go-to option here BUT do NOT go for Intel just because - AMD is actually v good in its own right and if you can build an AMD PC then go for that and use an NVIDIA GPU

Nonetheless, here's some recs for some common platforms:
NES - mesen
SNES - bsnes, snes9x
SMS, SMD, SCD, 32X - Genesis plus GX, Kega Fusion
PSX - Mednafen, XEBRA
Saturn - Mednafen, SSF, Yab forks
N64 - Mupen64Plus, Project64
DC - Redream, Flycast
PS2 - PCSX2
GCN - Dolphin

*Yab forks = Yabause forks; use Kronos for PC OR Yaba Sanshiro for Android (SSF has an android port but I have yet to figure out how the actual fuck to run it)

For new consoles (7th gen and up), you're limited for choice BUT:
Wii - Dolphin
Xbox 360 - Xenia (WIP, as is for the OG Xbox with CxBx-reloaded/XQEMU)
PS3 - RPCS3 (Intel preferred although AMD is gaining ground due to TSX support)
Wii U - CemU

For handhelds:
GB/GBC - Ganbatte, Sameboy
GBA - mGBA
NDS - melonDS + Drastic DS (ARM/Android)
3DS - Citra
PSP - PPSSPP

As for 8th gen - there are EXPERIMENTAL PS4 and PSVita emulators going around (Orbital, Spine, Vita3k{?}) but NO XBONE emulators; Switch can be emulated using Yuzu and Ryujinx (same dev team as Citra)

For PC emulation I recommend using a mix of DOSBOX ECE and PCem for HLE and LLE respectively!! That way you can emulate PC games and other software/high-end builds (esp since PCem has a dynarec as of v15) for the time (90s)

If you're wondering abt stuff like libretro and all, I would recommend you always, ALWAYS install libretro/retroarch bc most emulators are included but don't just rely on it for all consoles - use it in conjunction w emulators, e.g. Flycast via libretro + Redream on PC

Anyways that should cover most emulators; lmk if you have any issues or questions or if I've got anythin wrong durin this thread