Your QUESTIONS ANSWERED…

A selection of smaller questions from readers…

Take charge

Can I keep a Nintendo 3DS mint in box for collection purposes? Or do I need to charge it every few years to protect the battery? Piper2381 via Twitter

if you want to extend the life of the battery, then you’re going to need to charge it every so often – experts say that lithium ion batteries should be kept at around 40 per cent charge to improve their lifespan, so it’d likely be a good idea to charge it more frequently than you have suggested. Heat is a major cause of battery degradation, so if possible you should keep the system in a cool, dry place. This advice is applicable to a variety of devices. The 3ds uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery, much like the game Boy Advance sp and game

Boy Micro, the original ds, the switch and the Wii u controller. The PSP and Vita also use lithium ion batteries, as do laptops and smartphones.

MUSIC Mystery

Why is it that when I put my Playstation Ridge Racer disc in my CD player, I can listen to the music, but it doesn’t work for other games like Final Fantasy VII?

Terry Fisher via email

This one comes down to the way the music is stored. The Playstation can play standard cd audio during gameplay, as it does in games like

Ridge Racer, but it also has a couple of other options. Other games store pre-recorded music as files to be played back, often as files with the extension .XA, while others still use the Playstation’s sound chip to generate their audio.

lost World

Do you think Dinosaur Planet would have been better or worse if it didn’t get merged with Star Fox? Lea-lea via Twitter

it’s hard to know how to answer this, as we never played dinosaur Planet in its original incarnation. unless someone at Rare feels like inviting us up for a go on some old prototypes (and if you do, please give us a ring – we’d be in Twycross faster than you can say ‘it’s Mr

Pants’), all we can do is speculate. We’d guess that apart from the space combat bits thrown in to make it feel more star

Fox-y, the design probably didn’t change a great deal, which means it comes down to the characters. And let’s be clear – grand

Theft Auto V would be just as good if, instead of being about criminals who steal cars and shoot drug dealers, it was about fairies who borrow unicorns and zap goblins. it probably wouldn’t sell nearly as well, but the game design would be just as solid.