STACK #199 May 2021

FEATURE GAMING

STACK’s ROVING REPORTER

What’s your all-time favourite game?

BEST SELLERS at

My favourite game would have to be The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim . I’ve put more hours and had more replays of this game than I care to think about. I’ve also owned it on five different systems, so that’s pretty crazy!

APRIL 2021

1 NEW POKÉMON SNAP

KARL FURNESS @ JB Hi-Fi Ipswich, QLD

2 MONSTER HUNTER RISE

What have you been playing lately?

3 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

I’ve been loading up on all the goodies on Xbox Game Pass with Outriders and Forza Horizon 4 mostly, as well as some of the older Bethesda back catalogue. On the Nintendo Switch I’m replaying The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – when I’m not playing Hades !

4 ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS

What’s the best thing about working in games at JB?

5 OUTRIDERS

Our games departments are a fun and exciting environment to work in. I most enjoy when a family are buying their first console and we are discussing what everyone enjoys – it’s a great place to impart knowledge of the products and make sure that they go home with the full solution.

6 SUPER MARIO 3D ALL-STARS

What would be your desert island console?

7 SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE

My Nintendo Switch! I’ve put hundreds of hours into so many games for the Switch, and the impressive library of indie titles make it my go-to desert island console. I might need to take a solar charger though...

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

8 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD

My first memory of gaming would be the SEGA Master System. I remember playing the built-in game Alex Kidd in Miracle World and that you couldn’t save your progress, so finishing a game in one sitting was always tricky and exciting. Battletoads was another game I played in the early days – I still have nightmares about the motorbike segment!

9 RETURNAL

10 CALL OF DUTY:

BLACK OPS COLD WAR

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING The video games boom continued, with a raft of ground-breaking new titles hitting the arcades, the release of a revolutionary home computer that would take the world by storm, and the arrival of Atari’s movie tie-in of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . Uh-oh…

1982

T he home computer revolution was primed, and the machine that made it explode – thankfully not literally – was the Commodore 64. Looking like a more tanned take on sibling the VIC-20, the C-64 packed some serious power: 64K of memory (which was huge at the time), 16 colours, a sound chip that’s still in demand today, and sprite graphics that made it the perfect machine for doing your accounts… yeah, us neither, it was ALL about the games!

1981 gave us some seriously impressive arcade games, but 1982 said, “Hold my beer…” Just some of the now classics to launch

T hrown together for the Atari 2600 by one guy in five-and- a-bit weeks to meet marketing deadlines, this early example of the movie tie-in game

were car racing game Pole Position , Dig Dug , Nintendo sequel Donkey Kong Jr., Moon Patrol, Mr. Do! (a personal fave, despite the clown), Midway’s unauthorised sequel Ms. Pacman , potty- mouthed Q*Bert , Eugene Jarvis’s mega Robotron 2084, Time Pilot and Zaxxon .

was a virtually unplayable, confusing mess. It also triggered a massive crash in the home video game market, and prompted the death of Atari as we knew it. Despite this, it sold a whopping 2.6 million units by Christmas – however, four million were made, with an estimated 3.5 million returned, some of which famously ended up in landfill.

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