Video Game rights - what's the story?

[sdp]

Andrew is just being Andrew with that said, while roms may be a gray area in general when it comes to licensed properties you have to consider them abandonware since the rights are stuck in limbo and there's really nothing wrong with pirating them as in the case with TMNT games which now includes the Activition titles. The morality is up to you but I consider then fair game if there's no "easy" legal way to acquire them.

Now if they for some reason become available then yes you should totally support the franchise that you love even if you can get it for "free" as with most movies/music etc. as you vote with your wallet for cool stuff like that to happen and it's nice to have an official release.

It's not the ROMs that are bad, that's just the info on the game, that is basically perfect, the problem is the emulators which try to replicate the original hardware digitally and they will never run the same as they would in original hardware unless the actual game is ported but with these older game systems you can get games running 98.999% where only hardcore nerds can actually tell the difference and ironically the pirated emulators since they have so many enthusiasts usually run better than most "official" commercial releases.