what power, exactly? that nintendo doesn't care about these guys for some idiosyncratic reason?

The power to have a game natively on platforms it was never implemented on before but look identical to the original. To me, that's honestly cooler and more desirable than emulation; the fact that it's also more defensible from an IP standpoint is just a nice bonus.

I also wouldn't say that "respecting the limits of IP law" is particularly idiosyncratic either; you can make the case that IP owners like Nintendo often overreach due to the inherent advantage of being a large company with a lot more resources than a smaller open source project, but I don't really see it as worthwhile to call them out for not doing that in some cases.