Did Nintendo download a Mario ROM and sell it back to us?

[Dre Space Age]

It's even worse than that. If they took the INES Header out, it would not work in their virtual console because their emulation is based on that original INES-key version made two decades ago (in fact, all of the NES emulators are).

So they're using the pirates' version of the ROM dumps, and also the important parts of the pirates' virtual machine implementation. Can't comment too much on the ethics of that since they are open-source IIRC, but still.

Personally I think the shyts hilarious and now I don't feel so bad for playing their games in RetroArch.