I just refer to whatever was working back in the day when I still was using Windows (>= 6 years).Then I came over to Linux, where there is Wine, and that can run the games magnificiently. (Often better than Win themselves! I still remember playing Heroes II with my brother, me on Linux, him on Win. His game crashed each 10 minutes. Then I lent him my other Linux computer and we were gaming all day uninterrupted. (And with additional screencast that I hacked up in bash 
))
Once upon a time, I had plans for making a live Linux distribution for old games. There is even thread on these boards in which it is discussed, but it... hm... let's say it became one of those projects you never finish . However if the situation is so dire, then it will maybe prod me enough to do it in the next few months
)