Get some decent CRT shaders and spend some time calibrating your display and setting them up correctly - it makes a massive difference IMO. Personally, I’m a big fan of the “Megatron Death To Pixels” shaders, check out this video on how to set it up properly.

My goal is to eventually have a “pick up and play” setup

For that, I’d highly recommend switching to a gaming/emulation-oriented Linux distro, such as Bazzite with Emudeck, ChimeraOS, Batocera, Lakka etc. I personally prefer Bazzite due to it’s Steam-first approach and excellent compatibility with various controllers and proprietary drivers (nVidia), but Lakka might be better if you’ve got an Intel iGPU or AMD card, and want to stick purely to retro gaming - it’s the official distro for RetroArch afterall, so it’s very polished in that regard, and very lightweight.