Of course, this cannot be compared to producing your own .sid, .ay or .vgm that contains the direct chip instructions. And some purists would refuse to capture audio off anything but authentic hardware.

The only issue is that if you use VOPM or FMDrive, you can easily create something that cannot be recreated to play back on hardware. That kind of bothers me, if you market a song as "if the Genesis had 12 FM channels and a reverb unit". You might as well just use modern drum kits and not try to be so close to hardware without being authentic.

But use VOPM + Synth1 with some Linnndrum samples? Without pretending like it could play on a hardware platform? Nothing wrong with that, people will still call it retro or video game music.. make the music you love to make.

using flstudio itself is frowned upon. because it is a prison.

a very scary prison... ... then you start to love it, and then all of a sudden "Of, Course!!"

I definitely do, and one day I'll master my way through a Famitracker project... it's still fun!

I can only imagine it being frowned on if you were to claim is was authentic in respect of a specific systems or a specific set of limitaions. If you are honest about its origins I would think everybody would be happy to listen to the music and judge on its own merits (without bias). I certainly wouldn't consider it to be less worthy or down grade just because it wasn't created on a SID chip for example..

"Please reset the clock to the year 2007."

I can't think of the last time this was a big deal. If you want to prove something to anyone, make better music. It doesn't matter how.

Unless you're changing the tags on somebody else's song, don't do that.