Godspeed, my good man!

It's not an emulator... it just does everything an emulator does.

The emulators themselves aren't illegal.  It's the Roms that are.

Even then the Roms aren't so much illegal as they are illegal if you don't own the game.

This is why emulator sites don't have roms on their website.  Having the roms there is illegal.

Emulators are really only illegal when they are "built" a certain way.

Like when you buy a game and agree to not back engineer it.

Also by "owning the game."  That actually means owning the game.  Not like "I own battletoads so i'll download this battletoads rom."

It means you have to copy your own battletoads rom.  Amusingly rom copiers are often illegal as well just because people MIGHT use them incorrectly.

Khuutra, Nintendo's patents on NES and SNES hardware has run out, so making bootleg NES/SNES's is now legal. Nintendo sued somebody for making one a few years ago, and actually lost the lawsuit. You can now buy a system with 2 slots, for both NES and SNES games, brand new. I hear every single game works on it, but that 2 or 3 games per system have sound errors, and everything else is fine. I think they're $30 or so online? I'd just google "Famiclone" and look up every version and find the one you want. I think a SNES-clone (as opposed to the NES/SNES-clone) wouldn't have the sound errors. They have them disguised as PS2's and DreamCasts and everything else for no reason too.

That's kind of bizarre.

I am really glad that patents run out, though!

I suppose that thing I remembered Twesterm having might be a Famiclone...

Buy a SNES, or use an emulator. There really is only two choices unless you want to buy a Wii.

Edit: Most SNES copiers are not very good, it's probably just a better idea to buy a real one.

Hardware...? No, the only thing that came to my mind, is the VC on the Wii.

retro duo from buy.com 36.99 and free shipping

The FCTwin.


I have one, it's legal, and it works great. There's a list of like 10 or so NES games that don't work with it but it's still great.

There's also one that plays NES, SNES, and Master System games but I forgot what it's called. These also have the bonus of being pretty easy to find.

So we've got two actual hardware recs so far. Thanks guys, I'll do research into both of them.

I'm 100% these are legal as I've seen them sold in legit shops and even chains.  I bought mine from my local gaming shop and they're perfectly legal.