Well, the games will carry a fee. I just hope it's like a quarter for NES games or something reasonable.
It's an IGN link, so beware:
DS Nes"Regarding the system's backwards compatibility features, Iwata refered to this part of the Revolution as a "Virtual Console." From a technical standpoint, all NES, Super NES and N64 games can work with the system, although it's unclear if every game in Nintendo's tremendous back catalogue will be available.
There's some disappointing news for those expecting these classics to be available for free. Nintendo is planning on pay downloads as being the standard for this download system. There will be many types of services, though, including limited time free downloads. One possibility mentioned by Iwata is free downloads as bonuses for buying new games."
That's a quote from it.
Also the games will be able to be downloaded to the Revolution AND to the SD memory card. I think they got a hint from the PSP about this. This will also be used for DEMOS and firmware patches.
There will be no hard drive because of how tiny the system is. So it's not a total loss. 512 MB isn't that small anyways. Especially for oldie games.