Lol, I could have sworn you said netbook up there, my mistake!
As for notebooks, what sort of games are you looking to play? A notebook that can play high-end games well will cost an absolute fortune and be very large, but if you're looking for something that plays basic/older games you may be alright. A maximum budget would be handy as well.
Sort of, but they won't be playing games like that very well, and they will cost more than what you would pay for an equivalent laptop.
An Alienware M17x with the upgraded 1920x1200 (You definitely want this for a game) with an i7 720QM, Mobility Radeon HD5870, 4GB of RAM, 500GB of HDD space and Win7 Professional comes to $2350. For a serious gaming laptop, that's pretty typical of what you'd pay, actually quite good value.
The 15.6" version with an i7 740QM but Radeon HD5850 will cost pretty much $2000 exactly.
You can shave off a fair bit by going with Win7 Home Premium, or using a low-resolution screen (though not recommended, the high-res ones are fabulous by comparison).
I'd advise not dropping to quad core level, you can save a bit more by cutting storage space if you use external drives.
