anyways i really am trying to ask, what attracts people to these kinds of retro systems.

HDMI resolution instead of stretched out graphics on your big screen. Wireless controllers. Thats why I want one…

Also, I bet most chiptune lsdj carts and stuff WILL work, they just don't support it if it doesn't.

I think all they're actually saying is that they aren't going to any effort to test flash carts, so they aren't OFFICIALLY supported.

Or, more realistically, they're afraid that by "supporting" flash carts, that Nintendo will accuse them of supporting piracy.

Exactly what I think.
They basically don't want to say "Oh yeah, we love flashcarts too".

Or, more realistically, they're afraid that by "supporting" flash carts, that Nintendo will accuse them of supporting piracy.

I do see your point, I have friends who'd much rather download jnes and a rom of super mario, and play it on their £1000 gaming PCs then pick up an NES from a carboot sale. Obviously, it's way more convenient for most people, but yeah.

I still can't for the life of me understand why my mate would rather play pokemon sapphire on his android, than find the copy of it that I lent him a year or so ago, and play it on his DS.

You are speaking from the position of a gamer, not of someone who is interested in the artistic and programmatic aesthetics of the platform.  If you eliminate some limits, why not others? I could simply play sonic games rendered in the unity3d engine, cause its "better".

Not really, I'm primarily a gamer, and I much prefer playing on the intended console, for lack of a better phrase, it feels more leggit

Yeah, i suppose so. I guess I don't see old hardware as being more or less authentic, since usually the sound of a SID or a DMG is as much the result of loose tolerances at the time of manufacture or badly aging capacitors or on-board EMI as anything else. So it's really just different, as opposed to "real."

I was trying to say the same thing, just not as well as you summed it up.
The moment we mod the video/audio we lose the 'original'. For music, it's up to each musician to decide on the sound they want to create or recreate.
For an old fart like me, messing with the original hardware is the fun part. Voiding warranties on systems that were out of my reach back then. Just stuck in the past!
Yogi

As for carts being a failure point, how many used nes, atari, and sega units do you see in the wild versus cd based systems? In 30 years, cart systems will be the only classic games systems left.

Yea but how many emulators truly provide a 1:1 appropriation of hardware? Also you can argue that why emulate on some machine that is capable of much more?

Because then you only need one machine. Also, I don't want a 1:1 replica of the hardware when cartridges are involved, as they tend to be a major failure point. Alkaline batteries as a power source? I'll pass on that too. Horrible ergonomics? Skip. Terrible displays? Also skip.

There is really no conceivable reason in my mind why an emulator need be inferior to the original hardware in terms of sound. If you're willing to record your DMG with a PC, then why wouldn't you generate the audio with a PC too?

I really don't see a lot of distinction between the use of EMUs and orig hardware either. Within the digital domain, an emu can recreate the original logic, cycle to cycle, and recreate any quirks if that's the goal. There are a lot of good examples out there such as the dosbox OPL3 emu; very good but not quite the same as a hardware chip, but there are several Yamaha OPL chips that also sound different . If there is a demand the emu will be improved, but as time goes on, fewer of the users will have any first hand experience with the real hardware.
IMO, 'better' or 'worst' are very subjective terms. More dependent on the user's goals. For example, there are quite a few SID emus ported to uCs, AVrs Arduinos PICs. Now compared to the original 'SID' (keep in mind there are several SID versions that sound different), each hardware/firmware emu lacks some quality. But if you remove the 'SID' label and consider the firmware for it's own synth qualities, they are excellent.
  So for modern gamers that wants to do some retro gaming when they need a break form the Xbox360, Renton's got them covered. For the hacker/dev/chipmusic crowd there is also potential if the system's firmware is open sourced or hacked at some point. I can think of several ideas for a dream list.
Sorry for rattling on, Yogi