Emulators

My sister recently asked how I was playing all these Final Fantasy games. For the most part I own the original games on the original consoles which is where I expect to play them but the earlier games are a little too old for me. I never had a Game Boy, for example, which makes it very hard to have the original Final Fantasy Legend games just lying around. So I did the easy thing, did a quick Google search, and downloaded a GB emulator (Visual Boy) and the roms for the three Legends games. The first one I played in the emulator with the keyboard but for this second one I've hooked an xBox 360 controller up to my computer and am playing with it which just seems better.

But here's the thing... I never paid Square for these games. Even if I wanted to right now it's pretty infeasible. FFL2 looks to be running well over $100 used and I can't even play it on my current Nintendo handheld since the 3DS isn't backwards compatible that far back. And even if I did find someone selling this stuff Square wouldn't see a cent of the money. They have released new versions of them, but only in Japan. Now I'm not opposed to playing games in Japanese but for the first time playing a game? Will be a lot more fun in a language I can read.

Am I a bad person? If I had an easy and reasonable way to pay Square and get a copy of the game I'd absolutely do so. I don't know that I have a moral obligation to pay some dude who's unaffiliated with the company to get a second-hand copy of a 20 year old game. I like collecting cool games so I could see buying a copy sometime if I find one at a decent price but I still wouldn't be able to play it. I don't see how having a second-hand copy would change the moral issue of playing on an emulator.

I'm against software piracy in general. When I wanted to play xCom recently I went and bought it again on Steam despite having owned the game as a teenager. Because it was only $5 it was easier to buy it again than try to find a virus free pirated copy. But if it wasn't on Steam? I'd have risked it and gone searching. But a new game which I could very reasonably go buy? I would never pirate it.

Maybe this makes me a hypocrite. I'm pretty comfortable with the lines I've drawn, though. Port some games to the 3DS virtual console and make it easy for people to buy your old stuff, Square!