Yeah I would say the majority of the time taken was troubleshooting and trial and error with game testing and the emulators NOT Launchbox. Launchbox is easy and quick to set up, that takes no time at all. Every game I have in there works perfect at this point. I had to basically test all the games and weed out the ones that didnt work or were glitchy, that took time, plus setting up retroarch, MAME, Dolphin, PPSSPP, and PCSX2, that kinda of thing.
So I would recommend going after the games you want rather than giant bulk downloads.