The official Nintendo website directly answers the question about whether or not ROMs are legal without any ambiguity.

Are game roms legal. Nintendo explains it pretty well on their legal page. But there are lots and lots of legal ROMs for RetroPie and Lakka. What is the reason for this.

With all that said Nintendo never launched a case against a console emulator. Only in the most rarest of cases are they not. Downloading ROMs is illegal but ambiguously so.

Cracking a ROM is illegal as it means youre breaking the copyright management protections in order to access the game. Because of this. Unlike emulators ROMs are proprietary content owned by game developers and are usually protected by copyright.

Even though they are almost always used to facilitate illegal ROM game playing. Even if downloading ROMs is illegal many users believe that it is legitimate if the consumer already possesses a real cartridge of the game. Downloading unauthorized ROMs is a form of copyright infringement and is illegal much like.

Video game ROMs are illegal even if you own a physical copy of the titles. This is one aspect where ROMs can be legal and even if the actual copies of the games are no longer functioning. ROMs are illegal in just about every case since they are the game files emulators use to allow people to play games.

Many people say downloading ROMs under any circumstances should be. There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the. Downloading retro games can be a point of tension in the gaming community.