Classic Arcade Games

I am kind of interested in old arcade games that i used to play while young. recently i found out some such games and downloaded them. The problem is that my joysticks do not work with them, i have a dell laptop, pretty recent, good specs. The joysticks also do not work for these games on my desk top as well. Is it a problem with the games or with the computer, kindly help.

If the games are really old, most likely they don't recognize newer joysticks. Do the joysticks work with any other, more recent game?
Also, how old are the games? DOS or Windows based? An emulator of some kind may help in those cases.