The only way to truly be legitimate is to play the cartridge on actual hardware.
No, it's not. The NES/SNES Classic are legitimate and legal. So is buying these games on the eshop for the Wii/Wii U.
DrCidd posted...
SNES classic is no different than a Raspberry Pi with retroarch.
They are very different. The NES/SNES Classic are legal products sold by Nintendo. Raspberry Pi and other emulators are not legal products. You have to download pirated game ROMs to use with them. Downloading pirated ROMs is illegal period. It's just as illegal as downloading pirated movies or music or modern games.
That said, I use emulators on my PC, and I like playing old NES/SNES games on my PC with an Xbox One controller, but I am under no delusion that doing that is in any way legal. It is not legal at all. Downloading pirated files is illegal period.
Since I own nearly every NES cart and all of the important SNES ones I don't feel the least bit guilty having the roms on my machine. I already paid for them once.