STACK #207 Jan 2022

GAMING FEATURE

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STACK’s ROVING REPORTER

BEST SELLERS at

What’s your all-time favourite game series?

Hands down this has to be the original Age of Empires . I love ancient history and real-time strategy games and it’s the perfect mix of both. I remember using the informative booklet as a reference in high school ancient history class, too!

DECEMBER 2021

1 POKÉMON BRILLIANT DIAMOND

JARRUD SUKJAI @ JB Hi-Fi Maroochydore Home, QLD

2 JUST DANCE 2022

What have you been playing lately?

3 CRICKET 22

Currently I’m deep into Assassin’s Creed Valhalla , working towards my 79th PlayStation platinum trophy! The historical setting has really pulled me in, and the

4 BATTLEFIELD 2042

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

refinements they’ve made to the game in terms of side quests and exploration makes it really refreshing compared to past

5 FIFA 22

I’ve been gaming for 29 years, and working in the games department on and off for the last 15 years. I love talking to customers and other team members about our experiences and memories growing up playing games. My two sons are young gamers and they think I have the best job ever!

6 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

7 CALL OF DUTY: VANGUARD

Assassin’s Creed games.

8 HALO INFINITE

What would be your desert island console?

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

9 POKÉMON

Definitely the PlayStation 5. Sony has killer exclusive IP with games and series such as The Last of Us, Uncharted, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank and Gran Turismo, plus it’s backwards compatible to play PS4 games like Skyrim and The Witcher 3 . Everything I’d ever need!

SHINING PEARL

I remember my dad buying an NES console when I was about five years old, and my two older sisters and I got to choose a game each. We came away with Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 and Double Drago n!

10 NBA 2K22

1990

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING

A new decade saw Nintendo catch up to SEGA – in Japan, anyway – while arcade technology continued to take leaps, and a new device allowed players to “hack” the code of their console games to cheat their behinds off…

While SEGA had already released their 16-bit Mega Drive, Nintendo finally caught up in the bit wars, and really delivered with the cleverly- named Super Famicom for the Japanese market. Launching with two key titles in Super Mario World and frenetic futuristic racer F-Zero , it may have looked quite nondescript, but it packed a lot of power. Once again, Australia was stuck waiting a couple of years before getting hands on the same machine, slightly renamed as the Super Nintendo.

Once again Atari were leaders in arcade technology when they introduced their new three-player brawler Pit-Fighter . While arguably nothing special in the gameplay department, it was the first such game to include digitised, real-world people playing the fighters, with a fair stab at decently

While up until now most “cheating” at console video games was more skilfully working out patterns (or finding out about a hidden test code), actual cheating arrived in the form of the NES Game Genie “Video Game Enhancer” from Codemasters. While similar functionally to devices such as the Action Replay, which had released years earlier

animating them. It gave Midway ideas, and two years later their game-changing Mortal Kombat did it all rather better.

for home computers, this allowed players to “hack” into their Nintendo games, patching the code to deliver infinite lives, extra ammo and other significant assists.

40 JANUARY 2022

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