yah but then you get dropped frames and intermittent audio popping and when the game glitches or even crashes where it would do the same on real hardware, you're left wondering if it's the emulator that's fucked up. I don't wanna have to think about any of that during my leisure hours. The game owes me a good time.

I don't know what emulators you're using that gives you dropped frames. Megadrive emulation has been a solved problems for decades