Unfortunately, some of them seem kind of suspect. Then again, that’s always been the case with the Guinness World Records, right?
The video game edition of Guinness World Records 2013 just came out. Those 30 and above might recall Guinness’ yearly catalogue dedicated to human achievement and boredom. It was an indispensable resource, until the internet came along.
Which is they the people at Guinness have had to bend over backwards to stay in business. This includes stretching the definition of what a notable achievement truly is, now more than ever…
Let’s take a closer look at five in particular, take from the ten that USA Today recently re-published:
Longest Gaming Marathon: Was 120 hours and 7 minutes. Accomplished by Chris Gloyd and Timothy Bell, who played through the Resistance series at a game stop in Canada. Sounds like your typical good for nothing game store employees all right.
Largest Collection of Video Game Memorabilia: As noted in the video above, Brett Martin of Colorado has a collection that’s more than 8,000 items strong. Impressive, I guess? Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I believe we’ve seen far more impressive game memorabilia collections on the internet.
Highest Earning Call of Duty Player: Will “BigTymer” Johnson, who racked in $135,000 from four different CoD tournaments on the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit. Again, I could swear that a bunch of folks have earned MUCH more from StarCraft 2 tournaments. A LOT more.
Oldest Gaming Record Holder: John Bates, who as of June 2012, was 85 years and 205 days old. So I guess he’s dead then? Anyhow, Bates achieved 14,000 perfect “300″ games on Nintendo’s Wii Sports, which admittedly is pretty impressive.
Largest Bead Sprite: Kevin Gillespie created a pixel perfect replica of the Legend of Zelda for the NES title screen, using 57,344 tiny perler beads. It’s 4’1 across and is 5 pounds. Yes, this is an actual record.
I guess my biggest beef with Guinness World Records – Gamer’s Edition is that some of the info just doesn’t seem very accurate, referring to numbers two and three. The fact that they not so long ago hired Twin Galaxies to verify high scores, and is an organization whose reputation is somewhat dubious (go see King of Kong if you want to know what I mean), has further cemented my cynicism.
Anyhow, you’ll all have to excuse me. I'm trying to set a record for the most times blinked in a single play-through of Halo 4.
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