Is emulation/ downloading ROMs ethical?

in agreement w/ all your above reasoning and you didn't even have to get into archiving/preservation, modding (in many of the flavours it comes in), and graphical or optimization improvements beyond the scope of the original hardware

in a lotta cases where games r just no longer produced or widely sold i cant see a reason not to emulate or pirate games. even in games that r still produced if you want to avoid supporting a shitty publisher/developer i dont see much of an issue. personally havent figured out emulation jus yet but its important for a lot of digital preservation rn

yes i agree with these statements, an added statement i have is that downloading a cracked version of a game you already own is also moral in my opinion because then you can have a chance to increase performance that was taken from drm programs and the ability to play your games offline. you have paid for the product so you should have the right to access variations of that game you paid for, its nothing more than taking away a component you dont want.

i'm of the same mind as people who want to conserve these games. with new formats coming in and going out, there are a lot of gems that get lost to time. and idk, i'd like future generations to be able to experience the things we grew up with. what people now are growing up with. it's a nice little peek into the past.

for a lot of these games, there's probably no "legal" way to experience them, especially for games from the nes, genesis, and arcade games like polybius (ok maybe not that one). unless there are official ways to play these games, i think emulation is fine.

I thinks it's ethical when the system and it's game are discontiuned and no longer supportted since what your doing isn't gonna hurt the console makers or developers wallets

im really not too concerned with the legality, for one it allows me to play old games, second I don't have access to a console at the moment. Also after what Nintendo is been doing to modders, or anyone who talks about their game (plus basically trapped some dude into debt for the rest of his life) I think pirating their games is always morally correct

of course! preserving old games is incredibly important. if anything, companies like nintendo trying to get rid of any type of game preservation are morally wrong. 

i totally agree with your points! i think if there's no more support on a console, especially no digital game shop, then it's free real estate for emulation and modding. sometimes older games just run better on modern hardware anyway. 

Is nintendo really losing money if you download a rom of f zero gx or kirby airride (they dont sell these games anymore)