While compiling Dolphin for the Raspberry Pi I've found out that even my beaten 4yo Core Duo laptop stutter, needless to say I canceled that build process.
So what emulators would be running flawlessly on the Pi ?
Google for the "retropie project" to see which emulators (should) work.
FWIW, if RetroPlayer were ported to the Pi (pcjason provided
Raspbmc build instructions a while ago), the exact same emulator libraries used by RetroArch would be loadable by XBMC RetroPlayer. the libretro project's RetroArch and XBMC's RetroPlayer are both frontends to the same libretro API, and binaries are compatible with either frontend.
Thanks da-anda, I will give Retropie a shot.
garbear, my main issue is that I'm afraid my laptop won't survive 12+ hours of compiling OpenELEC, I need to get a proper build server (I hope in a month or two but the semester is in the way).