What are legal avenues for acquiring game ROMs?
What are legal avenues for acquiring game ROMs?
Emulators are legal, but downloading ROMs is not. Are there legitimate methods to obtain ROMs? I am willing to purchase them, including modern games like *The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* and *Super Mario Odyssey*, particularly Nintendo titles due to their console exclusivity. What about older games, such as *Super Mario 64* on the GameCube? I want to know if there is a way to purchase individual games without needing to buy an entire console.
Wii U games (Zelda) are optical discs while Switch games (Odyssey) are SD cards. If you have emulators for the systems, you can put in the original media and play them as well as the emulator allows. If these titles are no longer sold in stores, they aren't that old; you can still buy them on eBay or second hand. Older games on cartridges require digital purchase, but as Delaro already indicated, that's not going to happen. There are some exceptions like game packs including roms, for example the Sega Megadrive and Genesis classics include roms.