while it's actually not That Hard to play melee on dolphin these days (it’s honestly greatly advantageous to) i would still prefer to play on hardware if i can manage it
not to mention brawl
(as a sonic fan that detail is of much importance to me lol)
it is convenient; for archiving it is essential; but there remain many technical problems in practice that can drastically change the experience of the game sometimes
genesis emulators generally don’t handle the audio very well at all, for example