T3’s master of tech fun goes to work on your queries once more

The heavenly choir did sing out for its favourite games console

ILLUSTRATIONS: STEPHEN KELLY

Q How can I play classic games legitimately?

HAYLEY EVANS, CHESTER

A If you want to play something from the Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft console back catalogue and it happens to be available on their respective digital stores, by all means pay through the nose for your nostalgia. On the PC, services like GOG package up some classics in a ready-to-run, authentic enough format, often for okay prices.

There’s always the secondary physical market, but a mix of speculation, increasing rarity and the self-destructing nature of old computers and disks has driven prices for original hardware and software sky-high.

Of course, there are plenty of illegitimate ways to collect up old games which GaGu presumes you’re savvy enough to work out for yourself, and emulators (and indeed entire operating systems) exist when you’re ready to perform game necromancy and bring them alive once more. Heck, you don’t even need to download anything at all – archive.org has games with built-in emulation in a browseraccessible format, so if you access them through your neighbour’s Wi-Fi for plausible deniability you’ll be pretty much in the clear.

The Open Source Cartridge Reader grabs games for just about any platform, and can siphon off their saves too

Emulators, despite what Dave Nintendo keeps writing in his ‘letters’, are not actually verboten. If you’d like to pipe in ROM files generated from your legitimately owned cartridges, the Open Source Cartridge Reader grabs games for just about any platform, and can siphon off their saves too. You can build it yourself, or you’re looking at about £200 to get someone else to do it for you.