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THIS MONTH at

FEATURE GAMING

STACK’s ROVING REPORTER

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

World of Warcraft – actually, pretty much anything made by Blizzard.

BEST SELLERS at

RYAN BLACK @ JB Wagga Wagga, NSW

What have you been playing most lately?

FEBRUARY 2024

1 FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH

Currently I’m playing Palworld and Overwatch .

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

2 SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE

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

Having a job that revolves around all the things I love and enjoy, while getting to work with genuinely great people who make it feel like anything but work.

3 MARIO VS. DONKEY KONG

Nintendo 64. The games were incredible and any issue you had with the game or console could be fixed just by blowing into it!

4 TEKKEN 8

What’s your earliest video gaming memory?

5 SKULL AND BONES

6 PERSONA 3 RELOAD

Christmas as a kid, opening my Nintendo 64 with GoldenEye 007 and Mario Kart 64 .

7 HELLDIVERS 2

Sonic goes Pop! again this month with four cool new figures. MERCH MONT H M H of the

8 PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE LOST CROWN

9 MARIO KART 8 DELUXE

10 SUPER MARIO BROS. WONDER

Sonic – Amy Rose Pop! Vinyl

Sonic – Metal Sonic Pop! Vinyl

Sonic – Ring Scatter Pop! Vinyl

Sonic – Super Sonic Pop! Vinyl

GAME CHANGERS! A YEAR IN GAMING An existing console was beefed up, we set off on an initially rather bumpy ride into space, and virtual reality finally became a home console thing…

2016

We were quite used to established consoles receiving the shrinking treatment, and indeed both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One delivered on that front in 2016. But alongside the PS4 Slim, Sony unveiled the PS4 Pro, which took everything that was PS4 and upped the power, while maintaining compatibility with the existing games library. It featured an upgraded GPU and higher clock speed, and also introduced support for 4K resolution in games that supported it. Physically, it literally added another layer to the classic PS4 design.

In what was a major departure for the four person Joe Danger development team at Hello Games, the much hyped space epic No Man’s Sky arrived. Truly massive in its scope

October was an exciting time for PS4 users, with the arrival of what had been known in development as Project Morpheus but was released into the world as PlayStation VR. Working in tandem with the PlayStation Camera, while it was all a bit fiddly to set up, once done and users were whisked off into virtual reality it was a truly remarkable experience – just ask anybody whose first PS VR outing was the shark-infested wonder of Ocean Descent , which featured in the PlayStation VR Worlds compilation that ably showed off what the tech could do.

– boasting a universe of over 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets – there was controversy following the game’s eventual launch, as many expected features weren’t present. Over time, however, the game has grown exponentially, the original vision being achieved via regular free updates adding multiplayer, cross-platform play, VR support, and many other well-received features.

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