[Japo]

I think the legal status of emulators hasn't been stablished in court, because nobody's been sued about it, and it may depend on the system. Hardware may be patented the same that software has copyrights, and I think some manufacturers (Nintendo? not sure) have argued it to claim that emulators themselves are illegal no matter what software they're used to run or even if none. Some hardware (the famed Z80 processor I think) or even whole systems (3DO I think) were openly licenced so any manufacturer could make them, and that would mean that it would be legal to emulate them too. Anyway we're not lawyers...

But the debate is not about legality, PC abandonware is illegal in principle just the same. The point is that the owner doesn't care about the game's being distributed or even about the game at all. That situation surely happens to lots of games for other platforms, and even to hardware systems. So if PC abandonware exists then it's the same for other platforms, as simple as that--even though some platforms may have a large proportion or even all of its games and the hardware as well currently protected; but others won't.