I am not saying its is necessarily viable but what would the community say to console games being emulated and sold on GOG. Assuming Devs get behind it.

I think there are emulated games on here already, such as some Neo Geo games.

If this is true I was not aware.

That would be nice ^_^

The top two wishes in "Features", when you "emu", seem to be what you're saying, and that's 12k combined votes so many seem in favor of it - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site#search=emu&order=votes_total

Not only the devs, but, especially in the case where system software is needed, the console manufacturer, as well. I have never seen a console manufacturer approve of emulators, even for long-dead consoles (there's still money to be made releasing their own emulators, after all). I'm not sure how the Neo Geo and Amiga games got on here, though, so maybe there are exceptions. Scummvm, dosbox, and wine (for those games that ship with these) all get away with it by rewriting the OS from scratch.

I doubt Nintendo will actually let people buy games digitally on a platform they can't take down and replace with another in order to force everyone to pay for it, again.

I think most of the SNK stuff from dotemu is emulator based. Metal Slug is one example.

However the problem is that the emulation is terrible and there are frequent slowdowns. I've had the same problem on Steam and GoG releases, so I can safely say its the same build on both.

It's complicated, legally.

For example of the Amiga (of which there are a few games which do offer the image/rom files), one would have to get in contact with the Commodore holdings, who are nasty sticklers.

Needless to say, certain parties are in no way interested in the PC at all, such as Nintendo. Creating a legally executable emulator in a format only usable with it would likely be their own goal.

That is true. However some are open to emulators and porting. One of those is SEGA. They do have the Sega Classics on Steam. Capcom and SNK are there too.

Not to forget old Konami games are coming to Steam - https://www.gog.com/forum/general/konami_anniversary_collection_arcade_classics

Sadly, most game companies(console makers and game developers/publishers/rights holders) would rather hold onto their IPs and make semi-decent spinoffs/sequels/prequels(or ignore some IPs entirely if not deemed profitable enough) or release them themselves at inflkated prices to the older crowd then to give them to people cheaply via other people's emulators. Heck, they even steal other people's work sometimes(stealing emulators other people made and using them via repackaging to sell the games to people). :\Yeah, like allowing people to buy older games on their handhelds, at least until their NEWER handheld comes out and customers older handhelds die and they lose their games(and need to rebuy them).

I'm pretty certain that the slowdown is there, as part of maintaining parity to the original version. There have been some rare cases where some Dreamcast re-releases offered the option to remove the slowdown on some shooters, but for the most part, historically, slowdown has been intentionally maintained.

Having said that, do you happen to know any emulator that mitigates the slowdown in Metal Slug? As far as I know you can just use the game ROM from the GOG/STEAM/HB release with your choice of an emulator.

EDIT: And I don't mean that the slowdown is maintained to not make the original release look bad, but in order to not break the game's internal logic.

In Noclip's documentary about GOG one of the staff more or less confirmed that they have already experimented with emulated console games and gotten results, but as always it will depend on legal issues too.

If memory serves me correctly (and I highly doubt that), I have played a Metal Slug game on 3DS and it didn’t have slow downs. But it had a ton of glitches where the player character used to get stuck into the ground and not move