How much
cooler would the wii be if it also gave you access to a vast catalog of
oldschool NES, SNES, and n64 games for free? There would be
little reason for Nintendo to not offer such things for free (or perhaps a
nominal cost) because there is no longer a market for these games.
However, Nintendo realizes that among their target market is a rogue group of
idiots called fan boys. They will buy anything that Nintendo has to
offer b/c it rulez! And being the cool kid on the block who can
play Ninja Gaiden on their wii is too tempting to pass up. So
they'll pay the 6 dollars (or whatever it is) to download a game that they
already have on the NES and on their computer emulator as well.
Just on that slim chance that they may want to spend a half hour playing it at
some point.

Nintendo
clearly doesn't respect this group of idiots, but why should they?
fanboys clearly don't respect themselves. Now, they may argue that
it's only 20 bucks, or whatever the cost is. But you can extend the
economists theory of "no such thing as a free lunch" to "there's
no such thing as only 20 bucks". Because if you've earmarked
that 20 bucks as expendable, the next step is to realize that there is a choice
in HOW you spend it. And wasting it on a game that you already own,
and will never play, is embarrassing. And while it's YOUR choice,
it still bothers me because it's affecting the market. The Virtual
Arcade (is that what nintendo is calling it?) is clearly something that should
be (near) free. And it would be, if certain people could exhibit a little
control.