Yes and I have to do that on every device, and when it breaks I have to invest time to look it up, maybe have to wait for days before updated tools are available then install those on all the devices again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, for infinity. It is such a waste of time in my eyes, myself and my time is worth more then that.
Well yes, yes they did. It is called Canoe and is for example running inside the SNES Classic Mini. And that is not the only emulator they wrote. Writing an emulator is not some obscure magic, and it is way easier if you own all the schematics and other Information used to build the original hardware.