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Originally Posted by HarryT
Let me rephrase the question: can one buy the games without owning a Playstation console? If the games are in a cartridge, you (I'm guessing?) need special hardware to read the data from the cartridge? Never having owned a Playstation (I have an XBox 360 which uses DVDs) I don't know how these things work.
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You can buy used video games at flea markets and at stores that sell used stuff (such as
Goodwill, which sells donated items). In the USA, we also have private citizens selling stuff from their own home (yard sales, garage sales, rummage sales, and such) where you can find used video games.
And don't forget ebay and craigslist. 
Here is a webpage that discusses the legal issues and shows a simple circuit that you can build to read a game cartridge:
http://www.emulationzone.org/ece494/paper.htm
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The reaction from those that write the software used by the emulator authors is a little complex to understand. For starters, many software companies that wrote the programs for many of the classic game from the 80’s have said that they actually like emulation in the sense that it helps prevent their classic games from fading into oblivion. Some have even released their old games as "freeware."
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Wikipedia has interesting things to say about "abandonware":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware
And it looks like abandonware has been added as an exemption to the DMCA (along with another exemption that allows breaking "locks" on ebooks so that they can be used by the blind):
http://www.gamespot.com/news/abandon...-legal-6162308