The high score. This is an outdated artifact of what games started out as. They weren’t about being thoughtful. They had no great stories to tell. They were there to entertain as one would be entertained by checkers. They were also quarter thieves. Games were simpler. This was in the arcades as you can guess by my description. As time went on graphics, gameplay mechanics, and overall ambitions changed the way games were made and seen in the public eye. Narratives and goals were introduced and scores became a thing of the past. You don’t see anyone competing for a high score in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time do you? Oh wait; there is a scene and a thriving one at that.

Yes, ladies and gentleman. We have come full circle. Games began as bragging rights, evolved into something more, and now the score chasers themselves are not only back, but they evolved too. It now doesn’t have to be about a literal score. Time is a valuable weigh to measure how good someone is. There are huge events, like Games Done Quick, that revolve around these speedruns. So that’s the most notable way people compete nowadays. Some games still have high scores, but again, video games are always evolving. Instead of doing a piece on the most impressive speedruns, or high scores, I picked up a copy of the 2019 video game edition of the Guinness World Records to see how other gamers are competing. The entries may surprise you. That’s my goal at least. My competition if you will.

25 Giant Game Boy

The picture you’re looking at above is indeed real. Ilhan Unal from Belgium designed this giant Game Boy. It’s not just a prop either. This is a functioning handheld, but it gets even better. He installed a cartridge slot in the back that reads official Game Boy cartridges. How cool is that? I don’t have room in my gaming den/office at the moment, but boy would I love one of these. People are just amazing sometimes. Great work, Unal!

24 Best Selling Console

I already covered this in an article ranking the most renowned consoles by sales numbers, but in case you didn’t see/read it, here are the results. The PS2 is still the world’s best selling console. As of the printing of this book in 2018, Sony had sold 157.68 million units. It’s not surprising since it was advertised as a DVD player, prompting consumers to buy it for more than games. Can you believe DVD players were more expensive than PS2s at launch? Crazy!

23 A Marathon Of Terror

Another remarkable video game marathon was based on a survival-horror run. Lorenzo Ramondetti played Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 for 36:29:40. Being in a state of horror for that long is insane. Also, those games are only about 8-10 hours long so presumably he replayed them over and over again. Like the Just Dance marathon, the repetitiveness is what would really get to me. I think I could do this with a bunch of games though. Maybe I should try too...

22 PlayStation Trophies

Do you follow trophies on PlayStation games? I used to before I fell off after I got out of college and got a job in the industry. My time is more precious now. Anyway PSN user Roughdawg4 has the biggest trophy score. He is at level 266, with over 74,000 trophies making the score over 2.5 million.

I’m only at Level 26…

That’s an insane amount of games. Here’s the big question. What does he do for a living to have enough time to do this?

21 Crowdfunding Record

Do you know what Star Citizen is? It kind of goes in and out of the news mostly in regards to its current profits. You see this was a crowdfunded game that started in 2012. Currently, there’s an alpha build of the game released only to backers, but no release date has been made clear yet. It is the highest crowdfunded game to date and has made over $218 million. This game better be god-tier levels of insanity with that kind of budget. What’s taking so long?

20 Craziest Game Bundle

Did you think a couple hundred dollars for say Kingdom Hearts III’s limited edition was expensive? If so, then you’ve never heard of the Dying Light Spotlight Edition. How much did this package cost? Oh, only ten million. Yes, I did not stutter. This was basically a Hollywood version that got you into an acting gig related to the game along with other goodies. Dying Light was fine, but not good enough to spend that kind of dough on it. If you couldn’t guess it’s the most expensive special edition for a video game.

19 The Lord Of YouTube

Who has the biggest YouTube account right now? If you guessed PewDiePie you wouldn’t be exactly wrong. He has over 82 million subscribers right now. If we’re talking pure game channels though, Fernanfloo has the highest amount of subscribers with over 32 million.

3,000 subscribers is also pretty good, right?

I’ve never even heard of him before researching this, but the numbers don’t lie. He may not be a big deal to me, but he is for all of his fans. He must be doing something right.

18 The Final Collection

I never thought I was the best Final Fantasy fan, but I did think my fandom was pretty high. That is until I saw Tai-Ting Tseng’s collection. He has the biggest Final Fantasy collection with over 3,700 unique items from games to CDs to toys. You name it and I’m sure he has it. I mean look at all that! I’d love to take a tour of his shrine someday just to find some hidden treasures I never even heard of.

17 Xbox GamerScore

Raymond “Stallion83” Cox has the highest Xbox GamerScore with over two million points. Based on the average point system for most Xbox games, that means Raymond must have played over 2,000 games to completion. Have I even completed that many games? I’m in the hundreds at least, but dang that’s a lot of gaming. That’s also an impressive suit he’s wearing. I wonder if it cools like the real Master Chief’s suit. I bet it’s a pain to get off.

16 Pokémon Card Rarity

The rarest, most expensive Pokémon Trading Card is the so-called Pikachu Illustrator. It sold for $54,970 at a California auction in 2016. The exact number of cards printed is not known other than it’s around the mid-30s.

That’s an expensive piece of cardboard.

Now, these cards were made to award winners of an art contest held at the 1998 CoroCoro Comic convention. That’s kind of a lot made for contestants. You would think only one would be printed, or at the most two. One for Game Freak and one for the winner.

15 Speedrunning Breath Of The Wild

A more recent favorite game of mine was 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I liked it so much on Wii U that I eventually bought it again when I got a Switch. That’s how much I adore it. That said let’s take a look at the record for beating it with 100% completion.

I will never get close to this record.

SpecsNStats did it in 25:24:57, which is completely astonishing. That game is massive! I’m not sure about this, but I imagine he must have played it before if not several times over to get that good.

14 The Best Rated Game Of All Time

Did you know that the highest rated game of all time, according to Metacritic, is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? It’s one point shy of 100. Of the 22 recorded reviews, the lowest is at 90 courtesy of Happy Puppy who re-reviewed the game in 2016. I don’t agree that this is the best game ever made, but it was certainly a key title in Nintendo’s repertoire for the N64. And if you were curious the 3DS version sits at 94, which is based on 85 reviews.

13 The Lord Of Twitch

Ninja certainly had a crazy year in 2018. He has the most Twitch followers for a dedicated video game channel at over 13 million. It’s all thanks to Fortnite Battle Royale taking over literally the world. When Saturday Night Live does a sketch on you and when phones advertise that they can play Fortnite, yeah, you know it’s a big deal. He has more than double the second placeholder, Shroud, who has over 5 million. That’s still very impressive.

12 Giant Pac-Man

Have you ever had the wish of wanting to play Pac-Man on a giant arcade cabinet? Well, good news, there is one. The console you see up above is the biggest Pac-Man arcade cabinet made. Want one? That’ll be $11,000, please.

I’ve got Pac-Man fever.

This is an official Bandai Namco creation so for real, if you want one, they’ll make you a custom order. This is a pretty impressive display especially with the range. It almost looks like a setup for a game show of some sort.

11 Giant Arcades

Pac-Man was impressive, but not as much as this. The picture you’re seeing above is the biggest arcade cabinet in existence, which was built by Jason Camberis. He’s not associated with any company. He’s just a fan chasing a dream. Inside this custom model is a PC hiding a MAME emulator. Also, like Pac-Man, you can buy one of these cabinets for a mere $100,000. I don’t know why you’d want to. The size of this thing looks so unruly that even Tom Hanks would have trouble.

10 Nintendo Campus Challenge

Have you ever wondered what the most rare Mario game of all time is? No, it’s not that copy of Super Mario Bros. that recently sold for $100,000. That’s probably the most expensive Mario game now, but no, the most rare is the Nintendo Campus Challenge cartridge. This was a fun little tour Nintendo put on in 1991 and 1992, traveling to campuses to see who was the best. The cartridge was kind of like an early version of NES Remix. It sold for over $20,000 on eBay in 2009. It’s one of a kind. Every other cartridge was scrapped.

9 Mario Is Everywhere

This is an odd way to phrase it, but according to this edition of the Guinness World Records, Mario is the most “ubiquitous” video game character of all time. That basically translates to Mario appearing in the most games, which are 215 apparently.

Does this count Punch-Out?

Now obviously there isn’t that many core Mario, or even spinoff titles. A lot of these, I imagine, are in the form of cameos and Easter eggs. I’m disappointed they didn’t write the list down in the book.

8 Hogglike

Nidhogg 2 released on August 15, 2017, on PS4. The hardest trophy in the game is called “Hogglike” a play off of Godlike. This is a great title because you have to beat the game without perishing in order to achieve this trophy, which if you weren't aware, you perish in one hit. So yeah, it’s freaking hard. The first person to get this trophy was on February 23, 2018, over five months after the game released. As of right now, only 0.03% of people who played the game have this trophy.

7 Hidden Combos

This is a weird title for a record, but a YouTuber named Desk found a new combo exploit in Street Fighter II for Vega. This was in March 2017, 26 years after this game premiered in 1991. That’s incredible, no? I love finding records like this because it shows good games never fade away for fans. They only get better. This record, of course, was awarded to Desk for finding the longest hidden exploit in a game. Again, the title is kind of odd.

6 Failing To Impress

The first Bayonetta still holds the record for the most unique fail animations in a single game at 48. I think you know what I mean by fails. Anyway, this beats the previous record holder, Resident Evil 4, by just one point.

Let’s hear it for girl power?

Bayonetta came out in 2009 by the way. Someone needs to challenge her. And here I thought the new Lara Croft games had a lot of intense animations, but I stand corrected.