vmware has beta direct3D support. That's about the best you can do right now with a virtual machine, and it's pretty pitiful. It's also a huge pain to get the vmware tools to work in the free vmplayer.
Like Mak said, if it doesn't work in 7, either dual boot, or move on.
But like Saxon was saying, non-3D intensive games should somewhat work in a virtual machine as long as you have a fairly modern computer.