Best way to play older PC games?

So my girlfriend and I have had the itch to play some older pc rats GMEA like age of mythology and age of empires. I have a MacBook Pro that is used manly for work, and she just uses her iPad most of the time.

How Can I get some of these older PC Games for cheap? Is buying a cheap laptop the best option? Is there an emulator that we can use on an old MacBook? Any and all suggestions elcome!

Depending on how powerful your laptop is, for older PC games that don't have mac ports, the only viable option is probably running a copy of Windows (Any unregistered trial version would probably be enough) through a VM like VirtualBox. I don't think there are any options for that kind of thing on an iPad unless you're willing to jailbreak it and install all sorts of dodgy nonsense.

Unfortunately I don't know if there's any way to get a legal copy AoE for "cheap" at this point, without digging up some old install disks, but for a lot of other older games, especially DOS era stuff, then GOG is usually your best bet.

By cheap I mean the prices on steam are fine. Just wondering if there was a way other than buying a laptop or something. I’ll look into GOG! Thank you.