Video games are all about the challenge.
There's nothing more satisfying than beating your friend's lap time in Mario Kart or going
on a rampage in Halo.
But if you think you're at the top of your game, think again.
These guys took dedication to new heights to set video game records that will probably
never, ever be broken.
Longest Halo marathon
Halo was one of the top launch titles for the original Xbox console, and continued on
to spawn one of the top-selling franchises of all time.
And while plenty of Halo records have been set — and subsequently broken — one record
stands alone.
Ending on October 27, 2015, Finnish gamer Paavo Niskala played Halo 1 through 3 on the
Heroic setting, Halo 4 and 5 on Legendary, and then Halo 5 multiplayer, bringing his
total playing time to a whopping 50 hours, 4 minutes, and 17 seconds.
That guy's got thumbs of steel.
Longest Super Smash Bros. tournament streak
Nobody's gonna deny that Super Smash Bros. is a barrel of fun, even the players who never
could stop falling off that damn edge.
But some people take things to the next level.
One of those guys is Gonzalo "ZeRo" Barrios, who set the record for the longest tournament
winning streak in Super Smash Bros.
Playing on the Wii U, Barrios won 53 consecutive tournaments between November 2014 and October
2015.
But even Barrios doesn't hold the record for most tournament wins — that honor belongs
to Jason Zimmerman, who's won 339 eSports tournaments in his professional gaming career
and also appears in the Guinness World Records 2017 Gamer's Edition.
World's largest arcade machine
Years before console gaming, there was the arcade — and an entire culture of arcade
gamers.
People may not go to arcades as much as they used to, but that doesn't mean companies have
stopped manufacturing arcade machines.
And in 2015, 44-year-old network engineer Jason Camberis from Chicago, Illinois, not
only built his own arcade machine — he built the world's largest.
The game measures 4.41 meters tall and 1.06 meters deep, which is larger than a fully
grown African elephant, according to Guinness World Records.
It also has the ability to play over 200 classic arcade games.
Why would anyone build this monstrosity?
"It brings you back in time when you were young and you were a lot shorter and you felt
that full experience of being in front of a video game, where you're looking up…"
Ah, okay.
We can respect that.
Highest score on NES Tetris
Almost everyone has played Tetris at least once in their lifetime.
But how many of those people are ultimate Tetris Masters?
While scoring 10,000 points qualifies you as a regular, non-ultimate Tetris Master,
only a handful of people have ever reached the game's max score of 999,999 points on
the NES game.
Harry Hong became the first person in the world to hit that top score, and he reached
it on Level 28.
His record astonished the Tetris community so much that someone made a documentary about
Hong's achievement.
Unfortunately, Hong's record would be short-lived.
In January 2012, New York gamer Matthew Buco beat Hong's record by reaching 999,999 points
by Level 26.
"...yeahhh!"
It took him awhile — more than seven months — but he finally did it.
And so far, as of the making of this video, his record stands.
Sounds like he's been...Tetrisized!
"Put a piece here, put a piece there!
Use your thumbs, use your eyes.
Find yourself Tetrisized!"
Youngest professional video game player
In 2005, Victor De Leon III became the youngest professional videogamer at age seven when
he signed an exclusive deal with the Major League Gaming organization...and he goes by
the gaming name of "LiL Poison."
Because of course he does.
"So you're like the little version of the original poison?
That's cuuute."
LiL Poison began competing professionally at four, when he participated in a local Halo
tournament in New York.
Two years later, MLG signed the aforementioned contract with him — but he only cemented
his status as a professional gamer when he placed second in MLG's free-for-all Halo tournament
in 2005.
Although professional video gamers keep getting younger and younger, Lil Poison's record seems
like it'll be awfully hard to break.
Oldest video game record holder
At the other end of the spectrum from Lil Poison sits John S. Bates, the oldest video
gamer in the world to hold a Guinness World Record.
Starting in April 2008, Bates started recording every perfect game with a 300 point score
that he played in Wii Sports Bowling at his home in Onalaska, Wisconsin.
By June 2012, Bates, who was 85 years old at the time, had amassed a record-setting
14,000 perfect matches.
But he didn't stop playing just because he set a record.
Over the next three years, Bates accumulated another 6,000 perfect matches, bringing his
grand total to 20,000 perfect bowling matches by April 2015.
That's impressive, but come on… what else are you going to do in Onalaska, Wisconsin?
World's largest video game collection
Most people buy video games to play them.
But Australian-born Joel Hopkins collects video games for the sake of collecting them.
As of October 2015, Hopkins had amassed a collection of 18,000 games.
It took Hopkins over 20 years to collect all the games, but he really ramped up his hobby
in 2010, when he started actively searching for older releases around the world.
Of course, collecting that many games — as well as 200 consoles — cost a lot of money:
an estimated $2 million, to be exact.
Unless someone buys his collection, it's doubtful a record like this will ever be broken.
Beating Dark Souls using nine different controllers
These days, it's no longer just about beating a game; it's about how you beat it.
We've seen a player beat Bloodborne using a Rock Band guitar, but apparently that wasn't
enough for Canadian gamer Benjamin Gwin, who used a Rock Band guitar, a Rock Band drum
kit, a Rock Band piano, a Donkey Kong bongo, and an assortment of other controllers to
beat the notoriously difficult Dark Souls.
Gwin earned the distinct Guinness World Record for "most alternative control methods used
to complete Dark Souls," which is Guinness lingo for "he beat a super hard game with
ridiculous things, and we had to make up a category for it."
And that's not to knock his accomplishment.
Gwin must have loved taking on this challenge, because he plans to do it again — but with
an Xbox Kinect, a Power Glove, and a homemade controller made out of bananas.
It's not clear if that's insanity or dedication, but we're rooting for him all the same.
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