You could install Android (x86 version) on a virtual machine, laptop, or separate boot drive in your desktop PC.
Not sure about the compatibility, but I've installed it on four different machines and most games would run just fine.
Problems arise when your host has no touchscreen/multitouch as some applications make it pretty much mandatory.

http://www.android-x86.org/

You could also give http://www.genymotion.com/ a try. It's an advanced Android x86 build running within a virtual machine (VirtualBox) and does things like emulating touchscreen and rotation pretty well. To my experience its performance is also better than plain Android x86.
Genymotion is a commercial product (with a hobby project history -> AndroVM) but features a free license for personal use as well.

Google Play services aren't preinstalled in neither Android x86 nor Genymotion. But it's possible (google is your friend).

'requires you to install free games every few days'

nope,not for me. got games installed for around 1 month and nothing is deleted...

i recomend andy (http://www.andyroid.net/) i use it a lot with my development and its a good emulatore for android and also free give it a try
(sorry for my bad english)

Root your BlueStacks, then delete all the bloatwares. I'm not kidding, it's possible.

You can check everyday the unwanted (Spammed) app installed and remove them. Click on the orange "+" (All Apps) to view all your installed app and then "Settings". Here, there should be something like "App Manager" (With a trash bin icon) and you can now remove all the unwanted installed apps. I use it in my language, don't know exactly the buttons in English.

Thanks everyone for the advice, I'll start looking into these now.

Try Andyroid. I've been using it for some days, it's great.

I FEEL YOU WITH THE PHOTON THING. It was a big scam. They advertised that it would be getting the upgrade and a lot of people were getting it just for that and it would have been a pretty nice phone had they gone through with their promises but then after the promotion to sell the phone, they told everyone "nope sorry no longer getting the upgrade." It was a sham. I feel ya man.

I use bluestacks. it does tell me that i need to download a game once n a while but it never actually does when i agree to it. I tried some others, and many in beta but it was even worse...you can do VM but I really want to avoid that so I just left it to bluestacks for now. This thread is actually pretty helpful for me. I have since upgraded to samsung s4 but it has an overheat issue and ever since it almost caught on fire on me (and burnt me) it has been running slower for certain games and apps so I use them on my pc...i prefer to anyways to save battery life lol.

If you want to set up an android emulator, try it on linux. On windows it lags like hell.

In Google Chrome is posssible to run android apps without any problem on any OS. Here is link to tutorail how to: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-run-android-apps-inside-chrome-on-any-desktop-op-1637564101

I know it costs money, but how about getting a cheap (sub-$100) tablet or phone (example)? It would likely be more comfortable to play mobile games on a mobile device.

I don't have anything to contribute but i would like to thank you for making this thread and to everyone who responds.

Android SDK, its free, its from google, and you will have a android running in your pc (the version you like more)

Edit: i did it few time ago, now i dont remember how to, here a youtube how-to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx_Anj2f_iU

UPDATE!

I've tried Andyroid, Genymotion, and I'm probably going to avoid Androidx86 because I'm too lazy :P.

Andyroid: Performance was garbage, I tried allocating extra ram, cpus, video ram, enabling 3D support, etc etc... nothing helped. It chugged on everything. So unless there was one magical setting I didn't tick somewhere... it was terrible.

Genymotion: Since Genymotion works like Andy via VM I didn't have very high hopes for it, that said, It performed very well. I enjoyed the program and choosing the different VMs was nice. Only issue was the ARM Translation was removed. Luckily I knew that out of the gate so it didn't turn into a major issue. But, after throwing that back in, some of my purchased apps just didn't work. Unfortunately I uninstalled it.

So far, Bluestacks seems to be winning in terms compatibility, performance leaves a bit to be desired, but it works. If I look into anything else I'll update the post. As of now though, I think Bluestacks is just gonna "win".

P.S. Thanks to everyone for their help.

I use bluestack and I managed to stop automatic installs of crappy games, I don't remember exactly what i have disabled but if you are willing to you can add me on steam to compare our settings.

EDIT: try to disable those apps, non need to add me XD
Also, remember to tweak resolution and ram usage from the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BlueStacks\G­uests\Android)

I use Genymotion. I'm an android dev so I use it when I'm coding, because Google's emulator is laggy and horrible. You have to create an account to access the device downloads, and it uses Oracle VirtualBox. I've never tried Bluestacks, so I have no idea how it compares, and I've also never tried playing games on it, so I wouldn't know how it fares. I tried once to instal a non-free game on it and it crashed, I don't know if it was a faulty apk or what, then again I didn't obtain the apk through legit means. I do own the game though, but no google services means no play store, but I later found a way to get the Google services on it (ask if you want to know how) and never tried it out.