Non Open Source emulators are dead in the water in terms of archiving. 10 years later if the original author is not around anymore, you won't be able to rely on it nor improve on it. I wish all emulator writers understood that.

PPSSPP and Dolphin have made great progress BECAUSE they were open.

I would imagine a fair few emulator writers don't much care about maintaining the "backups" fiction, even under the classier name "archiving"

Historians in 2200 will be thanking them none the less, we lost a lot of early film lets not let that happen to this art form.

And it's not only film. Early television, audio recording, books (in special in times when copying them was costly)... The list of information we lost is enormous.

There is zero value from games not being published or sold anymore, so the term archiving is very much appropriate.

Saturn emulation on MESS is surprisingly good. Not up to some of the others, but I was pleasantly surprised last time I tried it with how many games were playable.