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THIS MONTH at

GAMING FEATURE

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STACK’s ROVING REPORTER

What’s your all-time favourite game or game series?

BEST SELLERS at

It’s so hard to pick! I started with Pokémon and Halo as my first few real series of games that I got into, but I’ve been in it for the long haul with the Destiny and ARK series.

KAMRYN MCNEIL @ JB Hi-Fi Elizabeth, SA

JANUARY 2023

1 CALL OF DUTY:

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

MODERN WARFARE II

What have you been playing most lately?

2 FIRE EMBLEM ENGAGE

Getting to talk games with the customers that come in. No one is more passionate than the people who game, and I love talking about what they’re currently playing and what hardware they use.

3 NINTENDO SWITCH SPORTS

I’ve been switching it up between ARK, Destiny, Dying Light 2 , and Two Point Hospital .

4 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

You can only have one games console from any era – what would it be and why?

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

5 FIFA 23

Getting my first Game Boy with Pokémon Blue ! I’ve been a Pokémon fan ever since.

The Xbox Series X. It’s my main console and the one on which I play with my friends the most.

6 POKÉMON VIOLET

7 POKÉMON SCARLET

MERCH MONTH CH of thee

8 GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK

9 DEAD SPACE

10 FORSPOKEN

Minecraft – Chicken Egg Cup & Toast Cutter

Pac-Man – Keychain

Mario Kart – Official Keychain

PlayStation – Ice Cube Tray

Pac-Man – Ghost Keychain

2003

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING Sequels and licensed games continued to come thick and fast, with one in the latter category especially standing out. A future shooter behemoth took its first shots, as did a service that would serve PC gamers for years to come…

By this point, gamers were used to most tie-ins with popular culture icons tending

While it’s now ubiquitous for gamers on many systems, it was September 12, 2003 that saw Steam take its first public baby steps. It started life as a means for Valve Corporation to pump out automatic updates for their various games – and at the same time employing improved antipiracy and anti-cheating measures - before taking tentative aim at distributing titles from third-party publishers later on. Over time it has continued to develop, ballooning to become the largest such service, featuring all sorts of aids for gamers such as social networking and server matchmaking, and as of December 2022 steam now houses over 50,000 games.

Releasing as a Windows exclusive in late 2003, not even Activision themselves realised at the time the gaming behemoth that their first-person war shooter Call of Duty , from developers Infinity Ward, would become. While at last check it was the fourth best-selling gaming franchise ever, with sales well north of 400 million units, CoD started life as a relatively humble World War II shooter. Players experienced situations in various theatres of war, with new AI-controlled allies alongside

towards the “meh’ side of things. So, when The

Simpsons: Hit & Run , the 22nd game based on The Simpsons , was announced, it didn’t raise

a blip. But when the game, an inspired parody of the Grand Theft Auto series, launched, fans were in for a pleasant surprise. With a wild story that featured input from the TV show’s writers and cast, strange things were afoot in Springfield, with aliens Kang and Kodos behind them, all in the name of boosting ratings for their reality show Foolish Earthlings . Now a genuine cult classic, Aussie kids even voted this their fave game at the next Kids Choice Awards.

them to help out when things heated up in what had more of a simulation bent than the majority of shooters at the time. Many ‘game of the year’ plaudits followed, as have many, many sequels…

FEBRUARY 2023

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