It is sometimes asserted that “Python is a real bad choice for any kind of real-time system”. When I first got my Python NES emulator to boot, only for it to run at 2 frames per second, I felt like agreeing. But is it really true? After just a few days reworking the emulator’s operational core into Cython, the framerate is now above 300fps, proving that Python is a viable choice for emulator development and other performance-dependent projects. In this talk, I will outline the advantages and some challenges of using Cython to achieve realtime performance from an existing Python codebase.