How to PLay XP Games on VISTA OS???

I installed XP on my VISTA OS (Acer laptop)by creating another partition but even then I wasnt able to play any of my XP games. Isnt there some way even using a virtual program? Maybe I did something wrong when I installed XP on my VISTA OS but everything seemed to have installed properly. I kept VISTA also on its original partition. Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have so many games that are for XP OS but cant play them now since I only have this laptop with Vista Home Premium on it.