At first glance, many of the categories seem a little silly, almost as if they were made up to make more records. This is, however, Guinness World Records that we're talking about here. These are the same people who bring you the record for the person with the longest fingernails, when you never really wanted to know in the first place. So when you've got the record for "Longest title for a fighting game," it's not something you were really dying to know, but it is interesting nonetheless. By the way, I'm a bit skeptical about the title holder on that particular record which is Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samurai. To achieve the record, Guinness uses its Japanese title, but converted to a readable format in English (the original title would have used Japanese characters that would have consolidated the length a bit). Yes, this title turns out to be 67 characters long in English, and it's most likely the record holder, but it seems like quite a bit of hoop jumping to get to that point.
Oh well, Guinness always had that kind of quality. Some of the records are silly, and it's more like a quirky collection of video game facts than anything else. For example, the title of "First People Simulator" goes not to The Sims but to a Commodore 64 game called Little Computer People. It's a rather colorful looking game that features a cutaway view of a house, with lots of daily domestic activities for said people to perform. Though the game may be obscure, the small paragraph on it reveals that Will Wright, The Sims designer, did actually play the game and learn from it prior to releasing his wildly popular people simulator game. Another surprise like this is the title of "First Survival Horror Game." It may surprise you that the title does not go to Resident Evil. Although RE was the game that spawned the term "survival horror," the title goes to a 1981 Atari game called Haunted House. Look it up on youtube.com and you'll likely have a divided room of gamers on this claim. Tidbits like this are interesting for gamers, and they can spark a quest to find and play these odd pieces of gaming history. That's worth the price of admission right there.
Of course, there are plenty of hard numbers-based records in this book. That's probably the first thing you'd expect on picking up this book. Indeed, one of the first things I looked up in the book was the infamous Donkey Kong high score. The battle for the high score was made famous by the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which I highly recommend to gamers and non-gamers alike. The current high score has gone back and forth between a handful of players over the years, but now rests back in the hands of Steve Wiebe. The current high score, if you'd like to know, is 1,064,500. Of course, numeric scores have not been the center stage for many games since the early days of arcade games, and since many games have gone online with achievements, there are plenty of non-score based records in the book as well. Many other records involve the fastest completion of a game, but some are rather unique, like the first person to earn a perfect score on Bejeweled 2 for the PC. Actually, it's really cool to think about a record like that for a minute. This kind of thing is simple to record in an age of games being connected to an online leaderboard, but would have been impossible only a short time ago in gaming history.
One particularly nice easter egg for the book are the quotes on the bottom of each page. You can test yourself and see how many you attribute to the correct game - all the answers are in the back. For example, you can try to guess where "That's the second biggest monkey head I've ever seen!" came from. Actually, if you don't know this one, I suggest you Google it, and then buy the darn game in the most convenient format for you. Also, you fight like a dairy farmer.
It might be hard to believe, but this book flows nicely and is entertaining for a "record" book. At times, it's like a traditional game magazine, with insightful little articles. At other times, it's like a trip through retro gaming time. Either way, there's something for any gamer to appreciate here.
