LET’S GET PHYSICAL

There are plenty of ways to play classic games today, from mini consoles and th the Evercade to digital re-releases on modern hardware, but some of us just prefer original hardware. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but modern demand doesn’t always play nicely with historical supply. Some games that are now recognised as classics were underappreciated in their own time, meaning that there aren’t too many copies to go around. Others may have been regionally restricted, or wound up as the victim of publisher problems. Lest we forget, gaming is also more popular than it was 30 years ago. Constant demand from players enthralled by modern sequels is enough to push up the price of even the most common of classics. In the past, that has meant that players either had to pay through the nose or go without, but today there are a number of companies out there that have decided to return classic console games to market by manufacturing brand-new copies, compatible with the original hardware.

Josh Fairhurst of Limited Run Games sees it as a simple case of satisfying market demand. “Reissuing existing games has always appealed to me because there are a ton of younger people being introduced to these older platforms via YouTube and they want to collect for these systems. Supplies are fixed, so prices have been rising to a pretty absurd degree. The market’s response to this has been to turn to bootlegs,” he explains. “These bootlegs aren’t earning the licence holders anything, but at the same time the licence holders aren’t pressing these themselves. Someone needed to step in