It's annoying and difficult, but I believe it's possible.

People like to say it's legal to download a ROM if you own the game, but it's not.

It is however legal to backup your own cartridge and make a ROM (in countries where the law says you're allowed to back things up).

Basically the same goes for the BIOS. Even if you own the console, you're not allowed to download the BIOS, but you're allowed to make your own backup.

EDIT: For convenience though, most people (myself included) would just download the ROM/BIOS and say we made it ourselves. Not everyone has the means to back these things up, even if they have the right to.

Of course it's possible, that's how they appeared on file sharing networks to begin with.

The disclaimer for the second paragraph applies to the first and third as well. In countries where local law doesn't say it's illegal, it isn't illegal.

You clearly are very ill-informed about this subject or more likely have been subjected to a significant amount of FUD that you actually believe. No emulator uses a modified console BIOS, all of them that need the BIOS either require you to extract the BIOS from your own console, or, as in the case of PCSX, they have their own cleanly developed and perfectly legal custom BIOS. You can of course obtain the BIOS through less than legal means (torrents and the like), but that does not make the emulator itself illegal, just the act of obtaining the BIOS via that method illegal.

With Nintendo consoles at least up to the Nintendo 64 (including handhelds), there is no BIOS, they were purely hardware consoles, so all an emulator has to do is emulate the hardware environment. From the GameCube forward, I'm not sure what is required for emulation, I've never actually messed with GC or Wii emulators.

EDIT - whoops, there's a page two to this thread and all this was already covered. So let me add something new:

Regardless of the legality of emulators or the required components of emulators, we are talking about GOG selling Nintendo games here. If that were ever to happen (and that is a VERY big "if"), the games would be packaged along with the appropriate legal and approved by Nintendo emulator, similar to what GOG already does with DOSBox games and what Steam does with the Sega Classics console games it sells. Even if emulators were illegal, it is obviously not illegal for the rights holders of the games to choose to distribute those games with their own emulator.

They also do not need a BIOS file. So far as I know, the only Nintendo system which did (at one point) require a BIOS was the GBA, but all of the emulators for that have long since sidestepped that requirement. It also might be (or might have been) required for the DS, don't know since I never ran an emulator for that.

Didn't I say the same goes for the BIOS? :P

Supreme Court in Poland said that it doesn't matter how you make a copy of the game/programme you own.

For example, if you cannot copy a CD by yourself because of copyprotection, you can download a copy from internet as long as it's the same version and the same language (because there is separate copyright for dubbing)

This is like I remember. Of course, you can't USE an original and a copy at the same time.

This is funny. I know LOTS of people who downloaded console BIOS from the internet and NOT A SINGLE PERSON who extracted it by themself.

i could freak out if they re released some of their nes and snes like sega's ultimate genesis collection...shadowrun,earthbound,contra...drools...

well, according to the first paragraph, that I quoted, doing what is in the second paragraph is legal in Poland.

And the people who make the emulators tell you to get the BIOS yourself, they can't really distinguish a legal copy from an illegal one, since they function the same. But legally speaking in North America you have to get the BIOS from your own system and you have to get the ROMs from your own games, you can't download copies here just because you already own it.

I'm waiting for the day Sega will release their Genesis packs here.

But I'll wait for Hell_Inc to tell me if the weather's changed down there first.

Nice of you to gloss over the section of my post where I addressed that particular situation. Regardless of how the BIOS was obtained by your limited circle of friends (I guarantee there are a lot more people who use emulators legitimately than just those few that you know), that does not change the fact that the emulator itself is not illegal in any way, just the manner in which they obtained the BIOS is.

I'm fairly positive my ROM collection would get me four life sentences.

I'd pay top dollar for translations of Fire Emblem 1-6 and various other tactical RPGs that never made it stateside from the NES-SNES-Genesis era

Question is, would four life sentences be enough time to play through them all and scratch them off your backlog? ;)

Regardless of the legal status of NES ROMs, I have currently no moral issues on playing them through emulators on my laptop. That said, I'd be more than happy purchasing them here should they become available.