Actually owning the emulators themselves is not illegal, and its also perfectly fine to own the ROMs for games that you do own in real life

Personally i've only really found emulators to be useful for games that really should run faster (cough pokemon cough) that maintain pretty much the same game play while running at like 250% or games that end up being ridiculously difficult or with really bad save options where save state or slowdowns become useful

+its just fun to have self-contained emulators on a flash drive in case your ever stuck on a computer with no internet/has firewall/is too old to run anything

I'm going to look at this from a bit of a different perspective, but I will still be able to share my opinion fairly easily. Take the Wii's Virtual console (although different, it is essentialy just an emulator). There have been several times when therehave been game I wanted, but didn't buy because I either already owned the game or I went out and bought the original game.

I would rather play a console game o the console it was made for. I have a room in the back of my house that is essentially just there to play older video games.

Well in my opinion i'd have to say both have a con and pro.
for example on a Emulator the game may run buggy...or something along that line, but on the other hand Emulators are awesome for playing old games that you had/lost/broke whatever the reason. On the other hand consoles hmmm...this is my opinon its 110% way better then a Emulator because well...its not buggy and the games are for sure going to run(sometimes...).

Kupon3ss

Actually owning the emulators themselves is not illegal, and its also perfectly fine to own the ROMs for games that you do own in real life

Mm... this is kind of gray area, and many will argue this to the death, but the simple fact of the matter is that unless you dumped the image yourself, it's illegal to download the ROM image, whether or not you own the original game. That 24 hour "rule" is a load of malarky, as well.

Essentially, what it comes down to is this: regardless of the channel you use to obtain the image (be it a torrent, website, or whatever else), whomever is doing the distribution must have authorization by the intellectual property owner to distribute the product in order for it to be legal (which, on the other hand, is why using Gametap on your PC or the VC on the Wii is okay).

As far as games on optical media are concerned... if you've read a license agreement recently, you've probably found that pretty much no software allows you to make even backup copies anymore. The onset of these policies kind of threw a wrench into the whole "fair use" thing, but what can you do? Some software will allow you to make a single backup copy, but each agreement is different.

Moving along... while the legality of emulators could be argued either way, any emulator that requires a BIOS (which is pretty much all of them that emulate systems that don't run on cartridges (and some that do!)) sets off some alarms. One, for the entire fact that it's illegal to download BIOS images for the reasons stated above, and two, I'd venture a guess that it's actually illegal to dump the BIOS software of the systems themselves.

I suppose it comes down to your personal ethics, but there's really no argument there.

Consoles are better than emulators. hands down.
Orchid named pretty much all the reasons why. I had a couple emulators that i had on my computer. The only time I ever used them was when it was a Japanese game I wanted to play and couldn't get a copy. I had snes9x, and it screwed up my whole computer. When I had my laptop do as system check and told it to remove anything that was causing a problem, that was what it took off.
Now, I don't agree with emulators. I hate how people just have to have everything for free. i do agree that the PS3 is overpriced, and even the xbox was a bit steep when it came out. But if you want games to continue to come out, and you want GOOD games to continue to come out, you need to support the industry. I even buy the virtual console games on the wii because they SHOULD get the money for it. WHO CARES if it's an old game. if you want to play it, you should pay for it if that is what the company asks. It's people like the people who play emulators that keep people like ME out of work, and it pisses me off. No, there are no emulators for the current gen of systems, so it's not like you can go play an emulator of super Mario galaxy, which means Nintendo won't get money for it, BUT you are not buying a product that should be paid for (such as mario 3 for the NES), therefore there is less money circulating in the industry because chances are you would pick it up off of a gamestore on ebay or a store like gamestop, which means that the companies are getting less back from sales, so the company is making less money and less people are being hired to help in the development in games.
I have several old systems and several old games. I play my wii most frequently, but I also play my other systems, like my saturn and dreamcast when I get new games for them.
And it's not hard to find a NES. it's called ebay. I picked up my dreamcast, 3 games and 2 controllers off of ebay for like $30.

Definitely consoles. I mean, Emulators are great, good for when you just want to sit down quickly to play some ol' classic games like the Sega Sonics or some Nintendo 64 Zelda or all the old SNES games. But I would never choose Emulators over Consoles when I would be playing seriously. Like, to actually endulge myself in the game.

Yeah, hard to explain. To me, emulators feel almost light-hearted. Just...play the game and that's it. =P

--Chukapi! ^_~

Emulators sucking. Do you know the Song "Video killed the Radiostar"? So, "EMU kill the Consolestar". :D

In serious, I don't like EMUs. 1. EMUs are illegal (at least here in Germany), 2. It's much cooler to have Originals, 3. The Play feeling on a Console is better than on PC. True, you can play EMUs with a gamepad, but I better play original games on my Consoles.

Emulators do not "kill" consoles, that's just a childish assumption. For my example, I'll use the Game Boy Advance for the console, and Visual Boy Advance for the emulator. If what you thought was true, then the sales of the GBA would be really shabby, but in fact, statistics prove to us that the ratio of console to emulator users is AT LEAST 80:1, since the sales of the GBA console has reached a staggering amount of 80 million worldwide, and I'm going to safely assume that at most, 1 million people have used VBA (even though I actually believe the number is not even half of that). So you see here, emulators do not "kill" consoles, but instead, they actually boost the desire to get the real console for some people. Hell, I used VBA for a year, and I ended up buying the GBA itself anyway. Plus, what's a million people NOT buying the console going to do? They would have still sold 79 million anyway, so there's no loss to them, but instead, just slightly less profit.

I prefer consoles over emulators.

But for games I can no longer get my hands on, I use an emulator.

The emulators are great to play old-school games, but it's nice to have a new console to play the new stuff. To play games like halo 3 in your computer you need to wait at least one year, and that's is like a decade in the games world.

About the is-not-legal thing, do you consider illegal having a PS2 (which can use PS1 games) and a PS1 Emulator and the PS1 game (I bought it, I didn't download it) and playing it on the computer? I mean, it's not worthy to use the PS2 for a PS1 game.
Apart from that, you have the advantage in a emu to save everywhere and accelerate time, but usually you have to play with the keyboard and the screen is smaller and it just feels different, I don't know.

I like both a lot, but consoles are better. I feel like I can really get into a game if I'm playing it on the console. At the same time though, when I'm using an emulator, I can multi-task much better. For example, if I got stuck in my game (while playing an emulator), I could just minimize and search for a FAQ online, really quick. Not that I can't get up from where I'm sitting playing a console, but yeah, haha.

Hisoka

I like both a lot, but consoles are better. I feel like I can really get into a game if I'm playing it on the console. At the same time though, when I'm using an emulator, I can multi-task much better. For example, if I got stuck in my game (while playing an emulator), I could just minimize and search for a FAQ online, really quick. Not that I can't get up from where I'm sitting playing a console, but yeah, haha.

You play emulators too much. You need to play more consoles. And BUY THE GAMES THIS TIME! Also, Play Rune Factory. Love
Your Roomie

They have their advantages and disadvantages.. like it depends on which console, it is a portable console like psp or ds, i would think the handheld would be better because the portability, but emulator for the "freeness", but if you know what to do you ca put the ROMs/ ISOs to the handhelds so it will be "free" too. well platform consoles.. maybe the emulator can be better but there are things as chips which you can used burned games and stuff to play them at the cost of updating unless you know what to do.. =/

Hmm... i guess i'd still prefer consoles. But I have to admit that emulators can go a long way since you can play pretty much any game on your pc coz of the emulators. And if you're itching to play a certain game that hasn't been released yet on the console that you own.. we'll i guess you have no choice but to opt for the emulated version of the game. But stability-wise... I still choose consoles.