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GAMING FEATURE

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STACK’s ROVING REPORTER

BEST SELLERS at

What’s your all-time favourite game series?

Professor Layton or Phoenix Wright. Both rely a lot on skills of observation and attentiveness, leaving you feeling simultaneously intelligent and entertained. Each share a focus on narrative and character personality blended with intuitive gameplay.

JULY 2023

CAMERON STEPHENS @ JB Hi-Fi Artarmon, NSW

1 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

What have you been playing most lately?

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

2 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

Recently I’ve been playing Ultrakill , a PSX styled, high octane, platforming, boomer shooter with a whole lot of charm. At surface level, it’s a relatively straightforward shooter. If you choose to delve deeper, you’ll discover a world beneath the surface that’ll make you question how you ever played games like you once did.

Getting the opportunity to personally cater to peoples likes, wants, and needs to provide an experience that could be potentially life changing! A JB team member hooked a 15-year-old me with a copy of Dark Souls and granted me the sort of experience I hope to give others.

3 PIKMIN 4

4 STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

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

5 DIABLO IV

Receiving a lime green Game Boy Color with Oddworld Adventures . I remember spending countless hours trying to advance through each screen but never getting super far. The sense of accomplishment that came with overcoming a challenge and visually witnessing the screen scroll to the right implanted a love for difficult video games that has lasted.

Definitely a Nintendo 64. Can you name a console with more classics? Seriously, the N64 had no reason to slap as hard as it did!! So many of the greats had their foray into the 3D game space with this console.

6 FINAL FANTASY XVI

7 MARIO PARTY SUPERSTARS

PlayStation Pencil Case

MERCH MONT H M H of the Calling all PlayStation fans! Show your love of all things PS with this cool selection of merch!

8 NINTENDO SWITCH SPORTS

PlayStation Backpack Buddies

9 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. U DELUXE

10 MINECRAFT

PlayStation Ice CubeTray

PlayStation Symbols Keyring

2009

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING With hot new hardware settling in, it was time for the software side of things to shine. We saw a release that challenged even the toughest players, a game featuring arguably the greatest band of all time, and a blocky outing that would go on to notch many a record… With music by The Beatles still not

Deemed so hard that it wouldn’t appeal to western audiences, PlayStation decided to keep dark fantasy action RPG Demon’s Souls , the latest outing by FromSoftware, a Japan only release. Eventually licensed for western players, it proved more popular outside of its homeland, and quickly gained a reputation for its instant-death difficulty, which many found

While it wouldn’t garner an official release until 2011, 3D sandbox game Minecraft first launched publicly in May of 2009, and it’s fair to say that it soon became quite popular. In many ways an endless creation tool, there was no real aim other than to exist in the world and play about. Appealing to a broad base from kids to the modding community, in the years since it has become a marketing juggernaut, with regular updates still eagerly awaited by its millions of fans. Oh, and it’s also currently

officially available online, it surprised

a few when The Beatles: Rock Band was

announced. No mere DLC addition to the core Rock Band , this was a standalone, The Beatles only affair that was jammed full of fan service as it spanned the Fab Four’s career from go to whoa. It introduced three-part harmonies to the Rock Band formula and released alongside new hardware including Paul McCartney’s Höfner bass, John Lennon’s Rickenbacker guitar, and George Harrison’s cool Gretsch number. Oh, and there was a big Ringo bass drumhead available, too!

extremely appealing. Now seen as ground zero for the “Soulslike” subgenre of games, it has garnered critical as well as fan acclaim, and directly led to such successful outings as the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne .

the biggest selling video game of all time, with well over 200 million copies sold.

22 AUGUST 2023

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