You can play the game already on the platform it was released on. There's no need to emulate it on PC at all, because of this. The people ruling on courts that they are legal are clueless judges in their fifties and older. Emulators like BLEEM clearly violate copyright law. Opening up the PS1 bios code, and rewriting it in a slightly different way for Mac is the same as reverse engineering an airplane, and then putting the propeller on the back of the plane instead of the front. 

There may be no need, but some people prefer playing it on a PC with the differences it can offer, and since it's been established as legal, why would we try to go through the hassle to purposefully remove options?

That comment can only come from ignorance or absolute disregard for game preservation.

So in your opinion, its better that legacy games are rendered unplayable once the original hardware dies, rather than emulation being used to allow said games to be played?

By the way, do you have any idea how the so popular nes and snes mini that Nintendo is selling manages to play the games? Hint: not by inserting the old game carts

What do you mean once the hardware dies? There are working NES systems out there to this day. Once the patent on a game system runs out people can just make their own versions. We've seen this with the retron. Clearly we're talking about modern emulators here anyway. Playing  emulated PS1, SNES, Megadrive, etc. is fine since the patent ran out years ago. Especially for games that never got remade. Speaking of which a lot of games do get remade, which throws another wrench in the "once the hardware dies" argument. 

I just tried to download a pirated copy of a game without having an emulator. It worked! So you don't need an emulator to steal games.

This thread reminds me: how's BotW on PC coming along?

If you have an overclockable i5 and a newer Nvidia card, it is nearly perfect. For those with AMD cards there are bugs. For those with weaker processors performace is not going to be solid.

The list of consoles I owned personally (not even including portables):

Atari 5600, Famicom, Sega Mega Drive/ Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega CD, Saturn, PS1, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3, X360, Wii, PS4, Switch

List of consoles still working perfectly:

PS3 (except the controler that is jenky as hell by now), PS4 and Switch

Hardware has a lifespan especially if actually used. So it means it WILL die eventually, there's no other way around it. In such cases the only way for me to play those games nowadays is by using emulators.

So even by your reply you changed the stance from "emulators should be illegal" to "playing emulated PS1, SNES, etc is fine". Ok, seems a lot more reasonable than the original position you were defending.

Now following that logic, how do you define what is "ok" to emulate and what should be "illegal"? Should the person who creates a PS3 emulator be considered some sort of criminal? What if Sony creates a PS3 emulator, is that not illegal anymore?

1 more correction I would like to make when you said "Playing  emulated PS1, SNES, Megadrive, etc. is fine since the patent ran out years ago"

What patent are you even talking about? Pirating a PS1 game is just as illegal as pirating a PS4 game (if it was even possible to do so). PS1 games are not public domain.

Finally, when you said "a lot of games do get remade, which throws another wrench in the "once the hardware dies" argument. "

If I own a game, why should I have to buy it again in order to play it? Sure, I can rebuy it for the sake of simplicity if the company decides to re-release it on newer hardware, but 1) is this the case for every game ever made? and 2) what if I prefer to save the money and play my original copy on an emulator?

In my opinion you're arguing for an unsustainable position, so much so that even the companies that actually own the IP rights to these games pretty much stopped fighting emulation on legacy hardware. It's not worth it for them in terms of public perception, and actually can help keep their IPs in the zeitgeist in case they want to use them in the future for newer releases.

And you can't use it without the emulator. You might not need it to download the game, but you need it to play the game. If anything, your post only furthers the idea that emulators are a tool for piracy since there's no other way to play your stolen game.

you can play it on the modded hardware...

now what?