Pick games for one of the top100 lists on gamefaqs:
SNES,
GBA,
N64,
GC,
PS2,
I tend to stick to the top 20, with some franchise / genre specific exceptions.
Metacritic is a decent fallback for finding good games.
Gamefaqs is also by far the best to find walkthroughs if you get stuck.
I use Batocera Linux as the OS for all my retro gaming needs.
Since the beginning of 2024 I have largely dropped PC gaming in favour of retro games. However in the ~5 years before that I played a fair bit of PC, and as such my favourites deserve their fair mention on my site. The following 6 are games I can wholeheartedly recommend. They are well described and tagged on steam, you'll definitely know if you like them within the 2 hour steam return window.