@AndrasDeak an emulator is just a software that emulates some hardware. Technically - it is legal. The original author of M.A.M.E (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) even did his DEGREE THESIS on the emulator he wrote (and got full score for it...)

The ROM is a dump of the original game, taken with various hardware. That obviously is the same as copying any other software.

So, a ROM means they won't be able to sell you the same game on their own retro-game platform (the Switch virtual-console games available on their online store for example)

A fan made animation? Again, it is not like you won't buy Breath of the Wild because you saw a 2 minute long video....

Quite the opposite, actually, you may see the video and get interested in looking up the actual game.

As I said, it is free advertisement for Zelda

Also... since you mentioned it...

It isn't exactly like they are that into fighting against emulators in the first place either....

The NES/SNES mini can be modded to play other games with basically an USB cable....

@Derpy "can be modded" vs "legally allowed to be modded" are different things though ;)

@AndrasDeak To be fair, I think that you are free to do what you wish with the hardware you already bought. If you want to mod it to run other emulators, you should be able to do so legally in most countries.

Obviously, at that point, the only ROMs that you could load up legally are homebrew games.

AKA fan made ones.

And even in that case it should be considered if the game is fully original or an hack of a copyright protected game.

I wouldn't know; I've never owned anything nintendo, or any game console for that matter :)

found this on a random forum