Windows 3.x in DOSBox is probably an excellent way to run 16-bit Windows games, but Win9x in DOSBox is still kind of dodgy. You definitely want to use the latest "Daum" build if you go that way. PCem is also making pretty good progress and might be a better option. Many sing the praises of using Wine in Linux, but that of course requires running Linux.
For 32-bit games using 16-bit installers, often you can get away with just replacing the setup.exe with its 32-bit equivalent. http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10988 has useful instructions.