Eh? All the popular old games are often rereleased on things like the NES mini. Everything else is available on EBay (the less popular stuff is pretty cheap) In any case, Nintendo only own Nintendo software, it's up to individual companies to rerelease their own games.

If you don't like this model, just wait until you figure out what "digital distribution" means for old games...

also the fact that aparently not activly protecting your trademark can actually make for a court ruling for it to expire.

yeah its a thing.

also unlike some other companies, like square, who lost the fucking source code and had to reverse enginner the older FF games from scratch for the PC ports, nintendo seems to have a very good archive of thier own games, as shown by the fact that they had starfox 2 and english mother 1 laying around.

It's their choice but Captain does have a point when he calls out Nintendo on their refusal to make their ancient library more easily accesible. I actually agree with the company on their stance against these kinds of sites, but they aren't helping us that much, either.  

While I agree it's pretty stupid for a company like Nintendo to take forever to port their old games to the switch, I do think it was in their right to shutdown the ROM site. Not only will hosting ROMs get people in hot water, the moment they try to make money off of it is when Nintendo starts sending their elite Ninjas. There are plenty of backdoor ways to make money off of hosting ROMs but when people get caught, they will suffer the consequences.

out of cusiosity.... what have playstation done with their old games? not putting a hate on sony... but have they done better than nintendo?

From what I can gather, they're not as adamant about shutting down ROM sites of their games. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.

Hundreds of PS3 games are available on PS Now, though they are unfortunately streaming only. 

Dozens of emulated PS2 titles are available on PS4 for purchase, and some are even on PS Now.

PS3 and Vita stores remain open at the moment. PS3 has PS1 and PS2 classics, Vita has PS1 Classics and PSP titles.

Switch has a lackluster assortment of titles linked to their online service. Why only NES and SNES? Where's Game Boy? N64?

3DS and Wii U have tons of classic titles on their still open eShops, but most of them are overpriced.

Sony has work to do, but they seem to be handling things better than Nintendo. What makes it even worse for Nintendo is the sheer embarrassment of riches they are sitting on compared to Microsoft and Sony. 

Adding hundreds more legacy titles from about 6 more unused legacy platforms would help Nintendo so much.

They're not out of touch. You're ignorant about copyright law—evidenced in your post, it's because of a childish sense of entitlement over products and licenses that don't belong to you. I'm quite happy Nintendo burned these guys to the ground not just for illegal distribution, but for the money they earned on it.

But before doing any illegal activity, you should probably speak to a manager.

⚠️ - User was warned for this post.

Nintendo should make the Virtual Console its own service/platform that you can access the games on multiple past, current, and future Nintendo platforms. It is silly to tie those games to the console. Their online infrastructure is still backwards.

I thought about being upset...

But then I remembered that these are just videogames and I already own way more than I could ever finish in a lifetime and being upset that I can't play some obscure 40-year old Nintendo game is silly.

I'm right there with ya man.  I'm just getting way too old to give a damn about this type of stuff anymore.  So I can't play some 40-year-old Nintendo RPG that never released outside Japan.  Big whoop.  I'll live.