The new Intel and AMD processors come with hardware virtualization capabilities, that can be very helpful to get games running especially on non-Windows platforms.

Linux kernel has for some time had support for Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) using these new capabilities, which with qemu allows to run eg. a Windows or DOS OS without sacrificing much speed.

Running sisoft sandra inside Windows XP in qemu with KVM gives me cpu arithmetic performance equivalent to AMD Athlon64 X2 4000 with an overclocked Inte Core 2 Duo E6400 cpu, enough for any old and even many newest games.

I tried Dungeon Keeper 2 and I have played Gabriel Knight 2 half-way through without a single issue with a Windows XP guest host. One can install Daemon tools to mount images and do pretty much anything as normal in Windows XP, except 3D-acceleration, which would have to run though a D3D->OpenGL wrapper. There is a patch for OpenGL<->OpenGL support for qemu. A 64-bit host can run 32-bit or 64-bit guests.

In conclusion these new virtualization capabilities enable today hassle-free and fast running of 2d Windows XP games with linux and probably also with other operating systems now or in the future (freebsd, etc..).