Downloading GAMES for an emulator however, is straight up piracy.

Only technically speaking, in the USA at least you are allowed to "make" a digital copy of most media for personal backup/use.  While that wouldn't cover downloading, its hard to charge someone for pirating something they already own.

Basically, what I was trying to say was that I don't really care that I payed for it. It was only a dollar. It's not like I would use it for anything and it was then only legit emulator on my phone. The Windows Marketplace has very little to choose from. The only commonly known games on there are Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, and there still isn't a free version. The only good free games are by Microsoft Studios.

I don't use emulators for a couple of reasons, the most basic being that I'm terrible at getting them or the roms to work perfectly, and I like the way they look on my tv. I dont know, but it seems as if emulators especially with polygon based games or even nes games look too "clear" or "sharp" making an already old game look uglier, hrmmm... maybe they're just not for me.

I don't use emulators for a couple of reasons, the most basic being that I'm terrible at getting them or the roms to work perfectly, and I like the way they look on my tv. I dont know, but it seems as if emulators especially with polygon based games or even nes games look too "clear" or "sharp" making an already old game look uglier, hrmmm... maybe they're just not for me.

Some were cheaply copied and the color palette used it bad but some NES games are still playable even when the graphics aren't great.
For example, all the Romance of the three Kingdom, nobunaga, Genghis Khan, and similar strategy game series are playable if you love the genre.
The SNES roms are good and all the GBA roms I played looked amazing and or close to the original.
Besides Mario Kart 64, I don't like the rendering of other N64 games though.
Anyway if you like old games then an emulator is the best choice + you can use pretty much any gamepads with them, the only obstacle is the OS.
In my case I had to buy new gamepads for Window Vista and 7 because my old ones only worked on XP but they're getting hard to find now and they are cheaply made.

Emulators are indeed legal, but the spread of emulators for currently produced consoles is sketchy. Besides the quality of the emulator being iffy, the fact that you download an emulator of say, a DS that is still being manufactured, is getting kinda iffy, as you're blocking a sale given to the company. Same goes for currently produced games. I don't go for an emulator and games until that system and games tied to it are done being renewed and are only being spread around as used copies, creating no sale loss to the companies.

As for quality, most emulators I've used have an HD option that makes the games look much better than they used to, clearing up some of the large pixelation of creating too big of a screen. Smooths out the borders of characters and such, and makes it look semi-new.

Visual Boy Advance is what I use when I'm too lazy to search for my old Pokemon games, or feel like cheating the crap out of them :P