3D0, Sega Saturn, N64... all of these emulators would be great, no argument.

However, the success of certain emulator projects on the N900 seems to be directly tied to how many times a console platform has been emulated on full dektop operating system's platforms.

NES, SNES, Megadrve/SegaCD, these have all been emulated by dozens of successful and seperate emulator projects over the years for one reason or another (user popularity, ease of original hardware emulation, widely available source hardware documentation).

Keeping that in mind, it's not hard to understand why we got really good emulators for those platforms on the N900. If you've got half a dozen different MegaDrive emulators available for linux, you only need to get one to compile correctly for the ARM distro and BANG! Next thing you know, we've got picodrive for maemo.

Other platforms, like 3D0, Saturn, Jaguar, etc... Never saw as much developer interest on the desktop for emulation for one reason or another (lack of popularity, difficulty with original hardware specs, etc). So consequently, Maemo developers have a lot fewer resources to work with in porting an emulator to the N900.

Just the way it is I guess. All the biggest N900 applications are ports from desktop versions of the same software so if there's a lack of desktop software to port, you get fewer chances as a successful project for Maemo.