The reason you download without contributing to the developer is because the developer fails to offer a version of that product that works on current hardware and offers the same experience. That's been one of my thoughts since I started doing collecting in the mid-late 1990's.

Heck, they won't even do what the music industry USED to do. Which was that every decade they would have some new medium that takes off and here you are, re-buying The Beatle's Rubber Soul for the 4th time on CD because your Cassette Player just died, and might as well get on the bandwagon. But the thing is music is pretty universal across it's formats - it does not have a computer-code issue to deal with like consoles do, one that requires emulation or even just wiring the same darn hardware from the previous into the current.

Admittedly, Nintendo has been better than most about it so I'm not sure why people bash them so much over it. I remember when I bought my first SNES on my birthday in 1992 - Super Mario All-Stars was being offered free with the purchase of the system - I was one of the first people to get a copy. I remember 2 distinct things about it - 1.) The play experience was totally different. Adding savegames to SMB 3 changed the challenge level, and certain things were changed to make the games easier in some ways. 2.) Sometimes I want to play the 8-bit variation with it's old blocky graphics, no save, no ability to rack up an entire palette full of power-ups. When I bought my Wii, I bought several games on the virtual console that I already owned for my NES on the original cartridges, and had for years. I have no problem paying for stuff.

My only issue with Nintendo is with their SELECTION. It's always the same 144 games every time, and out of all of those, Dragon Warrior is not one of them, and I loved those old Chunsoft programmed 8-bit Dragon Warrior titles. Sure they are probably not cannon now since I know they are a localized version of Dragon Quest, but I like them. So where do I buy them? Well, I can buy the carts, which aside from I & III that I have, II & IV are hard to find, IV costs almost $150.00 at some places which is ridiculous for a 25 year old video game. So I turn to ROMS, lucky for me I downloaded all my ROMS way way back in the day and have just kept them backed up ever since. Even have the old bad 1MB Dump of DW4 for my 486 running Nesticle, because somehow I'm nostalgic for the old emulators sometimes too.

But the Classic Consoles are a good move. But not good enough. The problem I have with those is they feel a little crass, like those Jaks Pacific controllers I got into a habit of using for a time, and thusly, feel a tad overpriced to me.

I always had the idea of reissuing hardware as it was, but with the enhancements so many of us pay to have to hook them up to modern televisions. The Classics do this, Retrons do this, always thought with Atari, rather than the Ataribox they should have put out a reissue 2600 that looks and plays like an old Atari 2600 from the early 80's, and then, maybe offered some games ON it, AND a way to connect a cart and play your old games, maybe even offer some new games on carts.....that's what hte Guitar Manufacturers do. You want a 1957 Fender Stratocaster, but can't afford the $54,000 original, so you go to your local guitar shop and buy a Japanese, Mexican, or Chinese reissue of a 1957 Fender Stratocaster. It looks like a 1957 Fender Stratoacaster, it may even PLAY like one and sound like one, but once you get into the nuts and bolts - it has the modern five-way pickup selector switch offering all the MODERN pickup combos of a strat, instead of the 3-way switch that offers just each pickup by itself as it was in the 1950's, you have a bridge that looks old but had modern tooling so the tuning is more stable, you have a modern backplate that makes restrining easier. But to the average person, it's still a very close approximation of the vintage 54' Stratocaster without the price tag or the setbacks. Sure it's not almost 70 year old hardwoods and aged pickups - but a lot of that is snobbery crap that has no use anywhere TBH. I think the same could be done with any major console from the old eras. We have SOC solutions for the NES and even the PC - I even think some company should try and come out with a modern-486 retro-DOS machine based off the ZF Micro Devices ZFx86 chip - it'd be PERFECT! And just slap it into what looks like an old AT Keyboard with HDMI and a SDCARD/USB/whatever and were golden!

But when it comes to Nintendo, I know a part of why they are doing this is I think they have some kind of redistribution thing planned for their 144 old original titles, likely online, I'm wondering if someone from Nintendo is taking note from the music industry and is hoping that "streaming" old games will be a big thing. I would not be surprised if a lot of the online-emulator sites get shut down as well.