Actually, Nintendo introduced "Virtual Console" on the Wii system to make money off of these old games you can't buy anymore.

For me, the biggest value in emulation is playing the fan translations of games that were never originally made available in English. Some of my favourites:

Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki Dayo Zenin Shuugou! http://www.romhacking.net/translations/226/

Romancing SaGa 3 http://www.romhacking.net/translations/416/

Seiken Densetsu 3 http://www.romhacking.net/translations/440/

(Note: None of those links will point you at the ROMs themselves, just translation patches.)

Hell yes. Also check out Wonder Project J 1 and 2. And then there's Star Fox 2, which is an awesome game that was never released.

I thought half the fun was in NOT understanding the Japanese text ?

Interesting (somewhat related) side note about the Virtual Console games: they are emulation shells around the original ROMs.

There are toolkits out there that will let you peel them apart and see / replace the resources inside. I used this to swap out one ROM for another so I could play the Nintendo NES version of Tetris on my Wii.

They should sell them on the app store and get it over with.

Namco is pretty tight about their IP, especially since they now have a tidy little business remaking their old arcade titles again using the original ROMs:

http://www.amazon.com/Namco-Arcade-Party-Cabaret-Cabinet/dp/...

The funny thing is that these titles aren't emulated, per se. They have re-implemented the original hardware (including Z80 core and various sound chips) and distilled it down to an FPGA, playing the code off of the ROMs stored in EEPROMs or Flash memory.

The target market for that cabinet is not the same as the majority of people that would download a ROM of one of those games.

The question we're addressing here is if there is economic harm in bootlegging object code for a system that is no longer manufactured. Arcade hardware applies just as much as console hardware, even moreso since the arcade machines were produced in quantities much lower than the catridges for popular home consoles. The response being mentioned in the grandfather comment was if owning a copy of the original object code on chips satisfies the copyright concerns. If you own the original game, then you should be able to sleep soundly at night that you're not stealing from the author of the game.

Namco (& Midway in the USA) stopped making these arcade machines 30 years ago. One could easily argue that that is WAY out of production and there's no possible way Namco could be harmed by bootlegging Pac-Man ROMs into a MAME cabinet and placing it into a Chuck-E-Cheese.

But, lo and behold!, Namco is making arcade equipment and selling it again. There's definitely an economic impact now.

Now you're talking about commercials use of downloaded ROMs vs. personal use. I'd say that the majority of ROMs are downloaded for personal use, so the idea of "bootlegging Pac-Man ROMs into a MAME cabinet and placing it into a Chuck-E-Cheese," isn't really relevant.

Is it any less of a copyright violation?

True, but the problem is that if ROMs were copyable with no legal issue that other companies besides Namco would be able to serve that market.

That's only a problem if you feel Namco should be able to continue in the copyright for those works obviously, I'm just pointing out that a difference in intended market isn't sufficient for Namco to drop interest in copyright.