Easymo, whut animal said. I have W98, groomed as he put it, and it handles any games I sick on it.. or am likely too.
I prefer w98 over the new systems simply because it'll run all my old DOS stuff. Best legacy platform winders has is W98/98SE, IMHO.
Got a buddy runnin XP.. he likes it, seems stable.. won't run any cool old dos stuff.
If you got the ram and a good vid card and enuff processor, w98 will run microdork CSF3 and IL2.