Well, controls are definitely geared toward getting business done, but they are at least as good as any others I've used for gaming. It does have a separate 3D videocard, which most Pocket PCs don't have. There are some pretty impressive looking games out that take advantage of it.
I haven't used Pocket Mame or Pocket NES, but it will run it as good or better than pretty much any other Pocket PC out there as it has a 624 Mhz processor which is currently as fast as they come, I believe. The controls aren't great, but few are. I don't know whether you can hit diagonals on the 4-way pad. That would be pretty important for NES emulation, I would think.