Is RetroPie right for this use case? Traditional Machine Emulation

[DaWorm]

I just picked up a Pi400, and I'd like to use it to host several machine emulators. I do like playing games, but that isn't the primary purpose I got this (I have a couple of 3B+'s I can set up for that). What I'd like to do is power up into a menu, like RetroPie provides, but instead of launching a game, I'd just like to launch a system emulator, such as Vice for C64/128/Plus4/VIC20, UAE for Amiga, one of the Atari 8 bit emulators (maybe Atari++?), perhaps an Atari ST emulator, and hopefully others too, CPC, Speccy, etc.). Once in the emulator, I don't want to immediately launch a game or app, I want the "just powered up the computer" experience. From there, I would use the emulator to mount disks or tapes or cartridges, etc. and load them as I would on the real console. Or just type up something in Basic, just like back in the day.

Are there any pre-built images with this sort of thing out there, similar to the many game images I see, or a tutorial I could read on how to set this up? I've tried searching both Google and the forums here, but since emulator and game go together so much, it is hard to filter out the "load the game in the emulator" posts from the "load the emulator" posts. Any help appreciated.

[mitu]

You can add shortcuts to your gamelist that will start with an empty file, thus disabling the auto-loading. Some emulators already have a similar shortcut (+Start Amiberry, +Start Fuse), you can replicate the setup for others.

If you prefer working from the desktop, then you can leave RetroPie alone and just install the emulators manually on a Raspbian + Desktop image.