Emulators.

[Kanifee]

Never used an emulator but lately ive fancyed revisiting my childhood and getting some mario 1/2/3 hours in, now i used to have a nes but i no longer do so im gona have to source a new one or find an alternative.
Not sure though and sorry if this sounds thick but are emulators legal? seems as if they would break umpteen copyright laws though im not 100% sure?

 

[Gimpymoo]

Some are not legal for the obvious reasons.

Also, I believe that at least Mario 1 and 3 are available to purchase on WiiWare for a few quid if you have a Wii.

 

[FoxEye]

Reverse engineering is not illegal. At least, clean room R.E. isn't. Thus making an emulator or a even a console clone shouldn't be illegal... but even then, I'm sure the lawyers would get to come out and play.

However these emulators need BIOS dumps and game ROMs, the obtaining of which is normally done illegally. There's some grey areas and some obviously black areas.

Now I own a MegaDrive, which is somewhere either in the garage or in the loft, and may or may not work. I also own all the Sonic cartridges for it. I think therefore I can play these games on my PC under emulation... legally? I don't know even then. However it doesn't feel wrong, morally speaking, to do so. I bought the damn games and still have them in my possession, somewhere...

 

[uv]

The emulators are perfectly legal, you just need to have ROM dumps to use them legally.

zSnes is pretty much the best Snes emulator

 

[FoxEye]

http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#download_rom

Sorry mate.

Wow, under those terms, you can't win.

On the one hand they acknowledge the right any owner has to make a backup copy, him- or herself, of their product.

Then a bit further down it says all devices that can be used to make backup copies are illegal... ROFL.

We all know, however, that Nintendo and others want to re-sell us our games, again and again and again. They don't want you to play a NES game on your PC, because they want to re-sell you that same 1990s game on the Wii, then again on whatever succeeds the Wii.

How many times do you have to re-purchase the same game to be a legal user? As many times as there are new consoles. Yeah, it sucks.

 

[Kanifee]

I figured as much that it was a common sense decision on the basis of big firm common sense, even if i had a nes here with said desired games, id still prefer to have a emulator on my pc working with the game, a better all round solution in my mind.

Any way, looks like ill just have to source a nes, hope the prices havnt rocket'd for some reason, can see the games if nothing else being slightly more than id like.... Mario being all iconic these days lol!