What is a cheap (but good) gaming laptop under $500?

You won't find it to be the best out there but in this price range it's a pretty decent one. Great for entertainment and for basic gaming. It will give you ample speed and memory for most games and reliable performance. Might be a good option unless you want to go used.

Hey Henry,
Sorry man, but I just don't see anything that will be good for gaming at this price point. Maybe someone else can find something for you but this is a tough one. The thing is, under 500 you're not really going to get any sort of graphics. I can suggest a nice general use computer at this price, like this Asus:
http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-A53E-AS31-RD-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Red/dp/B007MW142C/ref=sr_1_17?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1339510904&sr=1-17
That will be a great laptop, but the graphics are not very good. I think you might need to up your budget just a little bit if you want something with a solid video card.
This Acer is a great budget gaming laptop with the following:
Intel Core i5 480M Processor 2.66GHz
4GB SDRAM RAM
500GB HD
NVIDIA GeForce 610M << that's a nice entry level 3D graphics card
This will be a solid gaming laptop.
Hope this helps, I'll keep my eye out for something a little less expensive.