I have a friend like this, I'm a Nintendo collector and enjoying the hardware is my hobby. I know it's an expensive endeavor, and I don't expect anyone else to do it. I genuinely think any game should be up for piracy and emulation support, and it's incredible what can be done to make games look, sound, and play better than the original. But when I'm sitting there having fun with Metroid Fusion on my GBA SP and you sit there going "why would you ever do that when emulating is cheaper and better" I don't think you're conversing in good faith.
Definitely, I think there was even a hacked splatfest at one point, which would be SO cool to do regularly. I just meant to say that, as far as I've seen, the gamepad can't easily be used to play with if you were to emulate.
Are you trying to use your gamepad as a second screen while you emulate Wii U games on your PC? Unfortunately, I don't think that has been done yet. I believe the Wii U uses Wifi to send video to the gamepad and no one has made PC software to handle that yet (to my knowledge).
I had heard of people using the Gamepad to mirror the game playing on their PC.
If you are trying to use your gamepad as a second monitor for Wii U games you would probably have better luck getting a Steamdeck (Youtube link may contain helpful comments).
Yeah, effectively I'd want to use it as you could on Wii U, both displaying the second screen and interacting with the touchscreen. Splatoon in particular is extremely underrated with second screen use, being able to see and interact with the map in real-time is so much more useful than blocking your screen in future Splatoon games