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Book Review: Guinness World Records – Gamer’s Edition 2008
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Keyser Söze   |  

The Guinness Book of Records - Gamer's Edition 2008Guinness World Records
Gamer’s Edition 2008
Editor-in-Chief: Craig Glenday
Guinness World Records Limited
Cover price: $19.95; Available now

With the recent record-breaking feats of Grand Theft Auto IV, I was made aware of the existence of a gaming edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, and happily given the opportunity to review it — I say happily because I do actually have a wry grin on my face while I flick through it at this very moment.

After overdosing on GTA IV and developing calluses on my thumbs, I decided to relax and flick through this book — and for my friends and I (all gaming geeks I might add), Guinness World Records – Gamer’s Edition 2008 is the ideal coffee table book and has seen regular use whenever we’re hanging out.

The first thing that immediately strikes you about the latest Guinness book is that it’s definitely not dull, with a big emphasis on visual input and an eye-catching design — the cover being an almost luminescent shiny green, and the colour-coded category layout and (roughly) 20% of each page comprising of images.

The visual style does give the impression that it is aimed at a younger market, despite the average gamer’s age being around 35; however, the imagery is always relevant and unobtrusive. I do have to say, I have had a feeling of nostalgia when I peruse the earlier sections on gaming history and see my beloved ZX Spectrum 48K+ mentioned.

As far as content is concerned, I’m very impressed at the wealth of content provided and the manner of presentation. The contents are segmented into the obligatory Introduction, Hardware, Record-Breaking Games, Top 100 Arcade Games, and Record-Breaking High Scores, which makes everything easy to reference and find specific records or games.

I’m going to skip the Introduction, which just seems to house the records that don’t have a place anywhere else, along with a “year in review” section. The Hardware section starts off with the history, going back as far as 1st Gen gaming in 1972 with the release of the world’s first console the Magnavox Odyssey, with all the major consoles in the last 15 years or so getting their own 2-page spread. The section closes with a section on future technology (largely looking into things like the Virtual Retinal Display, as well as going into Moore’s Law among other things), and a compendium of the best-selling games by platform.

Following hardware, we have the main crux of the book’s content — the record-breaking games. Each game genre has its own content section, usually starting with a general overview of the genre’s humble beginnings. Any mentioned records highlighted in bold when they’re referenced mid-paragraph and this formatting is consistent throughout.

This is quickly followed by double-page spreads for the well-known record-breaking games. So if we take platform games for example, the overview is followed by a spread on Super Mario’s record-breaking feats (First “free” camera in a video game, First movie based on an existing video game, Best-selling video game of all time and many more), following Mario we have Donkey Kong, Sonic the Hedgehog, Prince of Persia, and so on. At the end of each genre’s section, there’s a “Round Up” segment that seems to feature records from some of the more little-known games — this section I often find the most interesting.

There really is something for everyone with the genres covered; they include, but are not limited to Sports games, Fighting games, Shooting games, MMORPGs, Strategy, and so on.

As well as the standard content, there are random facts dotted throughout the book. For example, were you aware the PSOne was the first console with the capability to transfer information back and forth between mobile phones? This was back when the console was first released in 2000, and the necessary cable was only available in Japan (it obviously completely failed to take off).

Also interspersed between the normal content are interviews with professional gamers, game designers, composers and more. The most interesting of these for me was “Lil’ Poison,” who became the world’s youngest pro gamer at the tender age of 6.

Overall if you’re a gamer of any kind The Guinness Book of Records – Gamer’s Edition is well worth acquiring. It’s not the kind of book you sit and read from cover to cover, but as I previously said, it is the perfect coffee table book for any gamer geek.

For more information visit http://gamers.guinnessworldrecords.com/

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