I have a laptop that I want to turn into a dedicated retro console and arcade emulation rig. I know there are things like RetroPie for raspi, are there any similar flavors for amd64? I'm basically looking for a similar "one stop shop" UI experience.
It could be (pretty much) any distro you want -- considering scripts like armbian-gaming exists and can give you a "one stop shop" experience.
Why running scripts like these instead of downloading the "real thing"? When you have "obscure"/unsupported sbcs and you need to "make your own" version of it.