Dude we were broke and my 486 was a hand-me-down from church. The first console I ever got was a Nintendo 64, and that was very late into its lifecycle. I can assure you that 486 was not contemporary, it was very much behind the times when I had it.

I’d be curious if you could squeeze out better performance with a newer emulator. Either way, SNES games on a 468 is not shameful, it’s the pinnacle of hacker ethos!

Newer emulator or even a recompilation of an old one. I'd bet there are a few modern compiler tricks that would help even on decades old CPUs.