If a game is currently being sold commercially, I lean towards emulation being more like piracy, but for a game that hasn’t been available at retail for 20+ years there is no harm in downloading, playing and enjoying these titles.
Exactly this. I do all my retro gaming on an original XBOX because I lost interest in owning physial copies. They take up a lot of space and I was just storing them in boxes anyway.
RE: Video game emulation: is it piracy or preservation?