Hi! I was looking for some info regarding Nintendo VC emulators. Nowadays they are developed by NERD, by I think at least the SNES emulator (Canoe) is based on the emulator for the Wii VC. There are some similarities, including the various game preset IDs and the header structure (see gist.githubDOTcom/anpage/c1085055db0242ea3c7558dab56712a5 and various threads on romhacking.net)
I think Intelligent Systems might have been involved with the Wii emulators. The Wii VC version of Famicom Wars allows you to fast-forward the game by pressing A on the WiiMote, a neat little feature included only for this game - it makes sense if the software house behind the emulator was also behind the game. But most of all, IS developed the Wii Dragon Quest collection, which included emulated versions of Famicom and Super Famicom games, and guys from IS are credited in Smash Bros. Wii U for "Virtual Console"
Osamu Yamauchi, Kenji Matsumoto, Masahiro Oku, Toshihiro Nishii
Nishii is also credited in the DQ game.
Smash Bros. Brawl also includes some VC games. Let's look at the credits:
Hitoshi Nakai, Shinya Sano, Norihide Sasaki, Akihiro Wakabayashi, Mikio Mishima, Kenshirō Ueda, Yoshinori Oda, Toshihiro Nishii, Kenji Matsumoto, Masayuki Taira, Shoichi Kanehisa, Cory O'Regan, Hiroto Alexander, Satoru Hosogai, Karen Ishikawa, Liu Yong, Virtual Console Development Staffs
Nishii and Matsumoto are mentioned, among other people from IS and people from Nintendo SPD (and of course NST, for the N64 emulator). Most of these SPD guys usually work at a supervision/coordination level, or they provide artwork. Interestingly enough, Kenta Nakata, who worked on 3DS VC accordingly to Iwata Asks ( iwataasks.nintendoDOTcom/interviews/#/3ds/eshop/0/0) isn't credited - this is despite SSBWiiU having a full-working GB emulator, which is likely a port of the 3DS one (which is itself a port of the Wii one, only used on Kirby's Dream Collection - they have the same config file and use the same rom structure. See:
gbatempDOTnet/threads/editing-gb-c-emulator-with-colors-read-info.420538/
gbatempDOTnet/threads/reverse-engineering-kirbys-dream-collection-vc.466979/ )
My guess is that the core team behind the Virtual Console was made by programmers from IS (including Nishii) and they were supervised/assisted by Nintendo. Or maybe Nintendo helped only with the integration of the VC into Smash Bros.. Still, IS was definitely involved with VC, though. At least for the NES/SNES emulators, that is. NERD subsequently got the source code and continued their work on Switch and Mini consoles.
Cheers and thanks for the amazing website. :)