Maybe if you're just a fan, sure. But there is a very strong and explicit meaning to "the canonical work" when you're doing archival/conservatorial work. There's what the artist created (as seen through the lens of how it was first released/shown, which certainly might involve a publisher or curator—thus the concept of a "director's cut"); and then there's what previous middle-men (curators, other conservators, republishers who acquired the rights after the creator's death, etc.) tacked on after that initial release.
You'll see the effect of this in gaming in the forms of e.g.:
• The https://www.no-intro.org project, whose goal is to curate a database of hashes of "canonical ROMs" (i.e. ones that are don't have demoscene "intro" greetz; but also which don't have the extra headers that some copiers add; and, obviously, which aren't bad dumps.)
• The policies of some emulators (e.g. MAME, Higan) to replace, whenever possible, High-Level Emulation code that "works perfectly" (i.e. matches console output on every frame for every known software title!) with Low-Level Emulation, which requires a BIOS/firmware dump of a chip to run. The goal in these types of fixes isn't to run existing games, but rather to make the emulator match the behavior of the hardware for running even novel or previously undiscovered games, such that it can be a useful tool in future conservation efforts, when the original hardware is long gone.
• The file-formats of some emulators (again: MAME, Higan) which keep individually-dumped coprocessor ROMs as separate files in a software title's archive file/folder, each with their own metadata; rather than inventing custom merged-binary file-formats for each system. This both allows future archivists to easily re-verify that individual dumps are correct; to replace bad dumps with better ones without invalidating the hashes for other ROMs that make up the same software title; and, in theory, this provides a (coincidentally machine-executable) schematic of the software-title-as-hardware-system, which could be used to reconstruct it wholesale in a future where all existing hardware was lost.
• The transition from the archivists at Archive.org preferring to see Apple II disk images in raw bit-dump (DSK) file-format, to wanting them as flux-trace (https://applesaucefdc.com/woz/) files, which in turn means that copy-protected games can now be preserved in their original, copy-protected state, rather than first needing to be cracked.
You'll see the effect of this in gaming in the forms of e.g.:
• The https://www.no-intro.org project, whose goal is to curate a database of hashes of "canonical ROMs" (i.e. ones that are don't have demoscene "intro" greetz; but also which don't have the extra headers that some copiers add; and, obviously, which aren't bad dumps.)
• The policies of some emulators (e.g. MAME, Higan) to replace, whenever possible, High-Level Emulation code that "works perfectly" (i.e. matches console output on every frame for every known software title!) with Low-Level Emulation, which requires a BIOS/firmware dump of a chip to run. The goal in these types of fixes isn't to run existing games, but rather to make the emulator match the behavior of the hardware for running even novel or previously undiscovered games, such that it can be a useful tool in future conservation efforts, when the original hardware is long gone.
• The file-formats of some emulators (again: MAME, Higan) which keep individually-dumped coprocessor ROMs as separate files in a software title's archive file/folder, each with their own metadata; rather than inventing custom merged-binary file-formats for each system. This both allows future archivists to easily re-verify that individual dumps are correct; to replace bad dumps with better ones without invalidating the hashes for other ROMs that make up the same software title; and, in theory, this provides a (coincidentally machine-executable) schematic of the software-title-as-hardware-system, which could be used to reconstruct it wholesale in a future where all existing hardware was lost.
• The transition from the archivists at Archive.org preferring to see Apple II disk images in raw bit-dump (DSK) file-format, to wanting them as flux-trace (https://applesaucefdc.com/woz/) files, which in turn means that copy-protected games can now be preserved in their original, copy-protected state, rather than first needing to be cracked.