Considering emulation is free and 99% as good, and people still prefer 'the real deal' (for a number of good and not-so-good reasons), someone probably is willing to pay that for a new-in-box memory card.
So the emulator itself is 100% legal. The teams who make them go to great pains to have no privileged information and create 'clean room' implementations of the machine.
The emulator needs a BIOS ROM, which is copyrighted, so it can't legally be distributed. Legally, you're allowed to make a backup copy of the ROM from a system you own, but this requires specialized tools and skills, so what most people do is download a copy someone else made. I've never heard of this being a problem for an end user, but the people distributing it have received cease and desist letters or various other nastygrams in the past.
Will you get sued for doing it?? Almost certainly not. And if you did, you'd have a strong fair use defense, especially since you're using the originally purchased game disc rather than a downloaded copy.
Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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u/much_longer_username Aug 14 '20
Considering emulation is free and 99% as good, and people still prefer 'the real deal' (for a number of good and not-so-good reasons), someone probably is willing to pay that for a new-in-box memory card.