NES and Apple II/e emulator on Pocket PC
The first console i ever had was a NES (Nintendo Entertainment System), and it was fun to have it when i was a little boy. And now, sometimes i still wanted to play those console games again on my spare time. I've found out that there are many NES emulators available for my Pocket PC, and some of them are very good in emulating the old games. The emulator that i used is PocketNester, it can play most of the game that i loved, it's fast, it supports sound, and best of all, it's free
I've once spent about a year of my life using Apple II/e, and it was fun too, until one by one the components stops working (and it was hard to fix it, since I cant find anyone owning an Apple II/e in Indonesia). Sometimes I still misses to play that thing again. I already have an Apple II/e emulator for Windows (called AppleWin), but I didn't thought that someone has already ported it to Pocket PC as well. The emulator for the Pocket PC is called Pocket IIe, and it can play quite a lot (but not all) games that i used to play.
Is it legal?
Warning: I Am Not A Lawyer
Is it legal to download game ROMS from the Internet and playing it on the emulator? By copyright law, actually the games are still protected by law, so some people says that it is technically illegal to copy those games (and the said it's only legal to download the ROM of the games you already own in catridge form).
But some other said that it is perfectly legal to emulate and obtain ROM for NES (and the same thing goes for Apple II/e). NES is not produced anymore, Nintendo is not creating an emulator for NES, and games for NES are not sold anymore, so no one is being financially harmed for the creation or copying of NES ROMs. Preventing people from using old ROMS only creates a false monopoly.
May be it is illegal to copy or download NES ROMs, but I doubt that someone is going to take legal action against people doing it (if you're doing it for personal use only). For new console games (like PS or PS2) you might get sued for copying the games that are still sold in the market.