Some people swear emulation is the devil, some say it's illegal (even though it's not), and some avoid it like the plague because "playing on real hardware is always better!".
What if you don't have the real hardware? What if you can't have the real hardware? Be it because you don't have any money or the circumstances around you make it nigh impossible.
That's where I've found myself for most of my life, even if I did have tons of retro consoles as a kid, I couldn't get much enjoyment out of them because I never had more than 5 or 6 games.
Sure, I had more to play on the PS1, but even then, I was always a fan of the classics. I loved going to the bar with dad because they had old arcade cabinets, the same ones he played on back in the 80s.
One day, my dad found a burnt disc with an NES emulator for the PS1 filled with roms, about 700 of them. He got it for R$3 (around 1.25USD back then) and got home all excited to play it on the PS1 he got me the previous Christmas, imported and modchipped from Japan with the help of his friend.
We were up all night. So many great games in there, and he could not stop playing Pacman. It's one of my best memories, and something like this wouldn't have been possible for me back then. All those great games were locked away in this obscure console that never released here. I knew they existed, but I just couldn't play them, until then at least.
When I got my PS2, one of the first things I bought was a disc with a PS2 emulator, SNESstation, I'm sure most Brazilians with my age know that name very well, and boy, it gave me countless hours of fun.
However it wasn't until I got my PC when things actually started to get real. My cousin one day filled up a DVD with tons and tons of roms, from the NES, SNES, Genesis, N64 and more, it was like getting the largest Christmas present ever.
I didn't even have a USB controller but I didn't care, I played through Majora's Mask on keyboard.
Again, if you're from a developed country where people bought tons and tons of consoles and they were never really that expensive to begin with, then you can probably find tons of retro hardware and software around you, be it on flea markets, shops or eBay.
Whenever I find something retro on a shop here, I can only admire, because those prices are just... Ridiculous.
I don't really care about making an argument to justify emulation, to justify pirating 25+ year old games. Sure, some of them can still be purchased with terrible services like the one Nintendo has, but why? Why would I buy a Switch and pay money every month/year to pay a limited selection of games that aren't even making any profit to the developers anymore?
I've seen a joke that Brazilians and Russians are the somali pirates of the internet, but what choice do we have?
We grew up either playing clone consoles that didn't run the games properly or with older systems.
We can't possibly hope to purchase those limited release "Classic" systems that companies shit out whenever they feel like making a quick buck and making headlines because of scalping.
It's all we have, and if this is what it takes for me to have fun, I don't mind.
I'll still buy newer games, of course, you never pirate something from an indie dev, from people that need the money. Pirating can be very very wrong, but in the case of all these games that are never going to see any money besides resales of old copies... Why should I pay?
Sure, remakes and remasters are cool, it's great when the game gets a modern touch, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes the only way to actually play an older game is through emulation. Some games would be stuck forever in Japan if it weren't for dedicated romhackers and people who do all this for free.
Those people deserve my money, not the greedy publishers who complain about not making $10 on games from 1991 (looking at you, Nintendo's virtual console).
Thanks to Sony being stupid and suing the Bleem! PS1 emulator, emulators now have legit legal protection and are the best tool for accessibility of older titles, for history, for preservation.
We desperately need something in place that guarantees that the roms, the files, everything, that constitutes the history of this medium shall be available forever more and for free for all those who wish to experience what my parents did, and in the future, what I did, without forking over $500 or more for an old console and ridiculous amount for games that get their valued shot through the roof by false speculation.
Developers and publishers with the rights to these franchises should look for profits in the future, should strive for innovation, not go after those wanting to enjoy what they did in the past. Not sue them for making passion projects based on their IPs, not erase their own history for the sake of their bottomline.