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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?

It has to be Pokémon. Pokémon is great at teaching people math and reading skills. Pokémon is a hugely impressive world which sometimes breaks into reality with the Pikachu festivals that happen in Japan. Seeing all those dancing Pikachus you can’t help but be amazed!

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NATHAN PRESS @ JB Home Orion Springfield, QLD

OCTOBER 2023

1 MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN 2

What have you been playing most lately?

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

Baldur’s Gate 3 . A huge D&D game that’s so amazingly immersive that you sit down to play for ten minutes and suddenly its dawn, as you’ve played all night! Fantastic writing, and easily a big contender for game of the year.

2 SUPER MARIO BROS. WONDER

JB is a highly motivated company that genuinely gets excited about games. Being able to take that excitement and deliver it to everyone around me makes it the best place to be.

3 EA SPORTS FC 24

4 ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE

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

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

Super Mario Bros. 3 . When the red curtain falls, and the music plays, what an entrance! It was one of the first games I remember playing, plus finding those secret whistles via Nintendo Power magazine as the internet wasn’t around when I was a young man.

The Game Boy Advance SP. This handheld was capable of so much. It could play NES, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy games, it could be used as a controller for the GameCube, and some of the best Pokémon games were released for GBA.

5 NBA 2K24

6 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

7 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

Sonic the Hedgehog 2024 Calendar

You’ve gotta go fast to catch this hot Sonic the Hedgehog merch! MERCH MONT H M H of the

Sonic the Hedgehog 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

8 HOGWARTS LEGACY

Sonic the Hedgehog Keychain

9 CRICKET 24

Sonic the Hedgehog Top Trumps Card Game

Sonic the Hedgehog Mocchi Plush

10 EA SPORTS UFC 5

2012

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING Racing fans were delivered a shiny new vehicle for open world thrills, Nintendo tried to do the impossible by repeating the success of their Wii console, and the likes of Guitar Hero stood by embarrassed as a newcomer showed everybody how shredding was done…

With Forza Motorsport proving a smash traditional track racing series, somebody to whom we’re very thankful came up with the idea of spinning it off into an open world affair. So, Forza Horizon was born. Concentrating on street racing events under the banner of the fictitious Horizon Festival in the US state of Colorado and packed with desirable vehicles,

It’s fair to say that Nintendo’s runaway hit Wii console was a hard act to follow. But follow it they did with the curiously named Wii U. Designed with an aim to bring more core gamers back to the Nintendo fold, it packed HD graphics and was fully compatible with existing Wii games and peripherals. Its big point of difference was in its GamePad, which was a tablet-like device featuring a touchscreen that could add to the experience of some games or be used to play others. Despite some top-notch games it didn’t do well, but it did pave the way for the rather successful Switch…

By 2012, interest in Guitar Hero and Rock Band had peaked. They had two significant downsides in that they involved a lot of plastic clutter, and for all the thrill of pretending to be a rock god or goddess that they delivered, they

online play saw others appearing in your world, usually driving like mad things because that was essentially the point of the game, which awarded points for doing so. Now in its fifth iteration, it remains a top open world racer.

didn’t remotely teach you how to play. Enter Rocksmith , which featured a vast selection of original tunes from original artists that you could actually learn to play for real. Just plug in a real guitar or bass with the included 1/4 inch to USB cable and away you went, with settings to ease the most amateur in, through to having the already proficient rocking out.

48 NOVEMBER 2023

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