STACK #193 Nov 2020

GAMING FEATURE

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I could talk about Switch all day, but I get paid to do it, which is great!

I

STACK ROVING REPORTER

for her, as she loves sharing her passion for gaming with her customers.

that Naomi loves spreading the word about. “I’ve been getting a lot of kids

BEST SELLERS at

“I love being able to work in a department

coming in who have been looking for suggestions, and it’s nice suggesting Animal Crossing: New Horizons . I started playing Animal Crossing when I was nine years old and it may be a little bit sappy, but I love that I’m passing it on to the next generation of people.” It’s no surprise that the Animal Crossing series is an all-time favourite for Naomi, but she’s a newcomer to another enduring Nintendo franchise. “I love Animal Crossing and also Breath of the Wild . Zelda is new to me, but Breath of the Wild has solidified my alliance to that game, I’m a big fan now. I even went and got a Master Sword tattoo for it – I love that game so much! It really set the bar for open world games for me.” As for future favourites? “Ooh, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity , because it’s the prequel to Breath of the Wild !” didn’t get it until March the next year. After the PS3 didn’t set sales charts on fire as much as Sony had hoped – although that isn’t to say that it was a failure – the company listened to what people wanted. We got a machine that was friendly to developers and consumers alike, with a vastly improved controller and support for sharing and remote play. In another occurrence of two, the PlayStation 4 has since gone on to become the second-best selling games console of all time, with almost 103 million units out in the wild at last count. Now it’s November once again, and we have the launch of the

Date ending: 16/10/20

SHOP TALK

that I’m actually passionate and knowledgeable about. I could talk about Switch all day, but I get paid to do it, which is great! I just really enjoy making sure everyone’s got what they need to play the games, and especially helping out younger gamers and parents when they come in. I love making recommendations for them.” There’s one game in particular

1 WATCH DOGS: LEGION (PS4/XBO) 2 PIKMIN 3 DELUXE (SWITCH) 3 FIFA 21 (PS4/XBO/SWITCH) 4 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE (SWITCH) 5 SUPER MARIO 3D ALL-STARS (SWITCH) 6 CRASH BANDICOOT 4: IT’S ABOUT TIME (PS4/XBO) 7 MARIO KART LIVE: HOME CIRCUIT (SWITCH) 8 ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS (SWITCH) 9 STAR WARS SQUADRONS (PS4/XBO) 10 NBA 2K21 (PS4/XBO/SWITCH)

S ome people were just born to be gamers, like Naomi Sharp at JBWetherill Park in NSW. “I’ve seen home videos from when I was a baby and there’s a SNES in the background, so I was literally born into a family with video games,” Naomi tells us. “My first game would have been Banjo Kazooie , that’s what I can immediately remember. Nintendo 64 was my first console, so Banjo Kazooie and Pokémon Stadium were probably my defining games. Then the DS, Wii and PS2 era was what I grew up on, which is why I’m fairly PlayStation and Nintendo oriented now. I love the Switch because it’s portable, so I can bring it to work and play it on my lunch break!” Naomi has been at JB for around three and a half years now, working in games the whole time. There couldn’t be a better fit 2000: While the Y2K bug was a total fizzer, it was a year of twos. Toy Story 2 and Mission: Impossible 2 got bums on cinema seats, Teenage Dirtbag hit number two on the ARIA end of year charts, and people obsessed over the pairing of Brad and Jen. The video gaming world wasn’t going to be left out, and so in November of 2000 Australian gamers received a gift in Sony’s PlayStation 2. Able to be installed as a monolithic tower, this impressive chunk of black plastic delivered a big advancement in graphics and sound over its predecessor, and introduced many to the joys (and often not so much) of online gaming. You could play all NOVEMBER

Naomi Sharp at JBWetherill Park with two of her favourite things

A little slice of gaming history…

your old original PlayStation games on it – backwards compatibility rocks – plus, if you needed a break from the DualShock, you could use it to play those newfangled DVD thingies. The PS2 went on to become the biggest selling console ever, with over 155 million units sold worldwide… November has since become a choice time to release consoles, with the run-up to end of year celebrations a big

PlayStation 5. We wonder, how will this one fare?

GAMES RELEASED IN NOVEMBER Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986) Super Mario World (1990) Mega Man 6 (1993) Hitman: Codename 47 (2000) Mass Effect (2007) Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012) Dishonored 2 (2016)

carrot for sales. So it’s no surprise that with their PlayStation 4 in 2013, Sony repeated the November launch in the west – Japan

500 the size of the team that worked on Cyberpunk 2077

8 Call of Duty games that developer Treyarch has worked on

126 million active users of Minecraft

26 years since The Elder Scrolls: Arena was released

20,000 spoken lines of dialogue in Mass Effect

10 NOVEMBER 2020

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