[Zulithe]

You can possess roms if you own the original game (I think... or maybe that is a myth too?)

Basically, even though it isn't technically legal, once a console stops producing games, they aren't gonna waste time filing lawsuits against you if you are caught with them or anything. Like for example the nes and snes, atari, and even the neo-geo. They aren't making money off of those consoles or games anymore, so filing a lawsuit against you would just be a waste of their time and money. If they did it, they would likely win but they have other things to worry about I guess.

Now for example, GameBoy Advance, Nintendo is cracking down HARDCORE on emulator authors and people distributing roms for it. alt.binaries.gameboy.advance *was* a popular place to get GBA roms, but now nobody posts binaries there. Practically all of them have been arrested or taken some form of legal action against. Same thing goes for the authors of the emulators. There was an emulator called iGBA but it has been discontinued due to legal action or threats from nintendo (or a combination of something similar)

To me, roms are no different than .MP3 (and roms have even been around longer) I'm sure a good 90% of the people who used napster before the filters used it to download copywrited music. Downloading roms... no different. Is it right? Well that isn't an easy question, but in a word, no. For classic consoles or arcades, yes I think it's good. For newer systems like N64 and GameBoy Advance, no. Just like with those Zelda games I posted about the other day. I knew that the roms were brand new and that I would catch heat if I even talked about them (hehe Dante kinda griped me out which is okay he had a right to) but I did it cause I love emulation, what can I say? Just because I played them on my PC doesn't mean I won't buy them (as a matter of fact I am going to buy both of them once my Game Boy Advance arrives next month)

So I guess... what I'm trying to say is, if you wanna be into emulation keep it low key because just talking about it could get you in some serious trouble with the law (and even casual forum readers). And if you are gonna play roms for current generation systems, if it's a good game you should go buy it. If it's a bad game, well, don't support crap or that will just send a message to the developer "hey, people like our crappy game, let's make crappy sequels!"