My unpopular opinion is to emulate an extremely reduced subset of x86. For example, jump to main and emulate the result of `int main() {return 2;}` compiled with gcc. You already have the compiler (no need to cross compile), you already have the decompiler and you can run the binary on the reference machine without an emulator. You save so much time having this entire toolchain already and you can start emulating simple C programs for x86 with <10 instructions and 1 or 2 addressing modes. I've written about this process before in Node and Go [0].
Yeah everyone will comment after me that x86 gets way more complex over time but if you just want to get a quick intro and you aren't a perfectionist x86 is kind of compelling.
And recently I wanted to try emulating MSP341 at someone's recommendation because it has a very simple architecture. But just getting a C compiler for it isn't easy! When I've tried to cross-compile C to other archs like RISC-V it also wasn't straightforward and I just got stuck in this toolchain spot.
If it were easier to cross-compile simple languages like C then writing emulators for other environments would be easier.
If you're on a new Mac, my whole argument applies for aarch64 instead of x86.