Following in the footsteps of our US siblings, we’ve decided to turn the mirror onto you, our humble readers, and show you just what popped off in terms of Kotaku Australia reading material in 2022.
So what went off this year? There’s a hearty mix of PlayStation news, Nintendo news, shitposts, horny content, and good ol’ judgement of others. What else would we expect, right? There were a few yarns from previous years that continued to go hard, including the lovely Jackson Ryan’s How To Get Fired From EB Games, as well as a very specific art post that has managed to live on for over a year. I wonder why?
Anywho, you’re here for the big boys. The big 2022 boys. The big beefy boys that were birthed in 2022. Here are the Kotaku Australia stories that really went hard in 2022, in order of publication (some articles have been republished from earlier in the year, and will be placed in the spot of their original time of publication).
Image: SIE / McDonald’s / Kotaku Australia
The new PlayStation Plus tiered service was announced this year, and we bumpkins in Australia learned that we wouldn’t be getting the Premium tier like everybody else. Instead, we got a Chicken Deluxe which was basically Premium but without any games that required PlayStation’s cloud streaming service to play. That’s pretty much all PlayStation 3 games. Boo!
Image: Girts Ragelis / iStock
This year finally brought us what we’d been longing for since the launch of PlayStation’s newest console: easier access to the PlayStation 5. Earlier this year, we saw preorder stock becoming more and more regular in Australian retailers, which was followed by PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan declaring stock shortages as “resolved” just a few weeks ago. Then finally, we learned that it’s now possible to just walk into a store and buy a PlayStation 5. Take that, scalpers!
Image: Kokkai Ng / Getty
Bunnings is a place where you can buy most things if you are a gardening aficionado, a tradie, or a DIY baddie. However, the Bunnings Online Marketplace made it so Humble Gamers could also look to Bunnings for their gaming needs. The Bunnings Marketplace allows certified third-party sellers to sell their wares through Bunnings, which just so happens to include gamer wares like high-end PCs and gaming desks. The online store, sadly, does not deliver sausage rolls.
Image: Nintendo / Kotaku Australia
2022 also became the year where Mario Mario, a simple plumber and mushroom stomper, became the Premier of New South Wales. That is, of course, just a Silly Holiday Joke. In reality, Nintendo decided to trademark the ‘NSW’ abbreviation via the European Union Intellectual Property Office to replace its initial acronym HAC, despite ‘NSW’ already representing the state of New South Wales in Australia. When people ask me where I am from, I will tell them I was born in the state of Nintendo Switch. That’s some gamer comedy for you.
Image: Henry Cavill on Instagram
This year, society’s eyes were opened wider and wider in some A Clockwork Orange-type fashion to the fact that Henry Cavill is a big nerd. He’s a Warhammer guy, he’s a The Witcher guy (in more ways than one), and he’s a gaming guy. To be specific, he’s a gaming PC guy. Cavill’s gaming PC, both in terms of how he built it himself and what he used within it, was quite a popular topic.
Image: Swatch / TOEI
When we got a press release for the newest collaboration between luxury watchmaker Swatch and beloved anime Dragon Ball Z, we decided to take a step back and look at how we could really get across how we felt about the watches on offer. Some of them ruled (the Vegeta watch), and some of them were just plain ugly (the Gohan watch). Apparently, people prefer it if you talk about how you think a watch smells based on what it looks like.
Image: Kotaku Australia
In a move many Australians would consider quite rare, I got to try out the Steam Deck. This is rare because Valve is yet to allow Australian gamers access to the Steam Deck (unless you want to pay the big bucks to grab one on eBay). Although my time with the console was short, it has stuck with me ever since. The Australian gaming community has come together on one single thing, and that’s desperately begging Valve to release the Steam Deck in Australia.
Image: Markiplier / YouTube
The Streamy Awards’ Gamer of the Year and internet hunk Markiplier announced this year that he would be starting his own OnlyFans account, with all the money going towards the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the World Food Program. The internet went absolutely wild, and people were desperate to know when the account would be dropping. Go to jail, go straight to horny jail. Also, the account is now live.
Image: iStock
This yarn came in clutch at the end of this year, racking up a whole lot of traction before 2022 came to an end. Basically, this dude trekked through 18 months of Woolworths purchases to amass around $1000 in combined discounts through the supermarket giant’s Rewards program. Using these discounts, he bought a PlayStation 5 from Big W for $9 as well as some other stuff. I admire his patience, as I will get a $10 discount on literally anything and use it immediately.
Image: iStock / Ruby Innes / Kotaku Australia
And last but not least, a late-stage shitpost managed to climb up the ladder this year. David told me on this day that I could have some fun, so I decided to write a creepypasta-type fanfiction about seeing Mario get potentially eaten by a horrible Toad-like monster. It was just a bit of a goof.
Except it wasn’t. It was all real, and I went back to the cave and saw it again. The hot air burst through the entrance and I refused to go in, but I managed to get a picture of the beast before I ran back to the gnomes.
Image: iStock / Ruby Innes / Kotaku Australia
Happy New Year, and here’s to more posts in 2023!
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