Virtualisation for videogames

Hi everybody,

I am a Linux user since 8 months. Although I have made some progress during this time I still consider myself a beginner (would be glad if you can help me).

I have a multiboot system, and I used to have 2 partitions for Ubuntu 11 (home and /) just for gaming (mostly Genesis and N64 emulators, but also some linux games like Tuxkart), and it worked perfectly (almost like playing the real N64, no configuration issues, the gamepad works right out of the box). Last week I removed those partitions (Ubuntu 11) to upgrade to Ubuntu 13, and it doesn't work properly with games (I think it is an issue that has something to do with 32bits libraries). After doing some research looks like many people have this very problem.

I don't want to install Ubuntu 11 again, so I was thinking that I could try to use a virtual machine for gaming purposes (booting to Ubuntu 11 with the virtual machine, for playing the games). Now, my questions:

- Is a good idea to use a virtual machine for playing games? Do they perform good?
- What kind of virtual machine should I use? I know some names like Virtual Box, KVM, Openvz, but really don't know one from the other and pros-cons of each one

Thanks for your time, hopefully this question will help other users too.