retro emulators

I bet most of you use emulators for one system or the other to play the occasional retro games.

What about this:
The programmers of such an emulator add a feature (that can be switched off) that will collect info on what games you play, send it to some server where everyone can read the statistics. So, it's purely to see which games are popular and which are not.

In return a server could provide info about the game you're playing (kinda like CDDB for WinAmp).

What would you think of such a feature?

Good? Bad? Useless? Useful?

Bad - most people's use of emulators is technically illegal. I doubt that they'd want the details of what games they're playing to be sent to some server.

not too bothered as I know what games I want to play for nostaglia. It could be useful if you were seeking out more of the same like Amiga Platform games that are popular or something...

Bah, you should be surprised to see how many emulators there are for the NES and SNES out there. Maybe there were some for the Genesis, too. However, for legal purposes, there are PS1, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Neo-Geo CD emulators that require you pop in the CD into your CD/DVD-ROM drive in order to play them, to make sure you legally own that game. Imagine that move, it's a lot easier than using .ROM extractions from these carts.

Legality etc. is not really the point of such a feature however, so if certain emulators require you to insert an original then the feature could still work. Its only purpose is to create stats about the popularity of games. So all the server issues and emulator plugin issues, can all be opensource, just in case someone thinks the server is housed in some RIAA building.. :P

i play games that you never find anymore and if they happen to release it on the GBA or something i usualy buy it

i only grab discontinued ones or games from japan, they won't work with my hardware