Oh, I totally feel you on that stuff. It is nice that the OG rights holders get a bag for licensing to them, Antstream also seems good for this. And I accept that all my ROMs and disc images are illegal.
The reason I stick with emulation is that the retro bug comes and goes with me. I’ll have the urge to play some Mega Drive, N64, Playstation Games for a night. Then I’m done for a month and back to playing new titles.