Anyone into emulators?

I recently looked into the idea, and I spent the last few hours trying to modify my wii to be able to play games from the more classic systems that I enjoy. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I must have missed a step along the way, and I would love some help figuring out how to do it right. Any advice is greatly appreciated, whether it's the best console emulator to buy and hook up to my tv to run my roms (I'm a traditional controller gamer, call me old school), or the best way to get the mods to work on my wii. Thank you all so much, I look forward to your responses!