Stephen Daultrey is the editor of the amazing Guinness World Records 2016 Gamer's Edition that is out now. With the book packed full of fantastic new facts and records about the most popular games around, Stephen has picked out his favourite moments to share with you below...

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Farthest distance ridden on a pig in Minecraft

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Minecraft's ground-breaking open world ‘creation’ gameplay lets you literally go around and do everything and anything. Build a world to play in and survive in. That’s the drill!
 
The Ordnance Survey people effectively recreated a scale-down version of Great Britain in the game using their own data. The British Museum have been encouraging people to help them rebuild their own museum in the game via its website. And the game is considered so educational and creative, it’s even taught in one Swedish school!
 
However, such is Minecraft’s scope for gameplay diversity, you can even do things like battle zombies, chop down wood and ride animals. Which is why you get quirky records like this one – LJ Pegross travelled 667km (414 miles) on the back of a pig in his own procedurally generated world. I mean, why would you not?
 
And that really is the open-ended joy of Minecraft. Creative, fun, educational and ever so occasionally, bizarre!
 
Highest-altitude game console session on land

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William Cruz played Far Cry 4 at a height of 5,660 m (18,569 ft) at Kala Patthar in Nepal. I like this record as it shows a gamer in the real world – and in a very specific location – and contrasts nicely with…
 
Highest-altitude freefall videogame session

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A team of skydivers played Skylanders: Trap Team at a height of 12,5000 (3,810 m). Quite difficult to do! This is another fun record that gets gaming out of the home/bedroom and into the real world. Can it ever be beaten? 
 
Most concurrent viewers for an eSports tournament
 
eSports is becoming absolutely huge, especially in the USA and Asian countries such as South Korea, China and Chinese Taipei. The very best players in games such as Dota 2 and StarCraft can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some rare cases, even millions.
 
League of Legends is a Massively Online Battle Arena Game (MOBA) and is the second most lucrative title in eSports. It effectively sees two teams of five battle compete against each other in strategic, fantastical battles.
 
The final of 2014’s League of Legends World Championship saw “Samsung White” (South Korea) take on “Royal Club” (China) and took place in October 2014. It was watched by 11.2million concurrent viewers – that effectively means 11.2 million watching it live around the world on the internet.
 
The final itself was staged live in the Seoul World Cup Stadium in South Korea to a sell-out crowd of 40,000 – that’s more than many Premiership football matches! 
 
The crazy thing is that unless you’ve actually played League of Legends, you probably won’t have a clue what’s actually going on. That would suggest that all those viewers are people who have played the game too, which shows you how popular it is becoming.
 
Most prolific videogame voice actor

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Steve Blum just keeps on bettering his own record. He has now voiced at least 354 different videogames, with plenty more lined up. A good aspirational figure for people who want to work in the gaming world.
 
 
Hardest version of Tetris

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Classic record from a classic game and also celebrates creativity. Federico Poloni programmed Tetris with an algorithm that analyses the board and then selects the worst possible piece for the player to have to insert, making the game incredibly challenging. We call it a “twisted creation”, as this was done deliberately to frustrate the player.
 
 
Simply because it’s a lovely-looking thing: 4.41 m tall, 1.93 m wide and 1.06 metres deep.
 
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Largest life-sized PAC-Man maze
 
A nice real-world record. This was created for a Bud Light TV spot shown during the 2015 Super Bowl. It measured 580.86 m2 and was measured in Los Angeles, USA on 7 Jan 2015.
 
 
Fastest car in a videogame
 
The Red Bull X2001 Prototype is a “concept car” that travels at 622 km/h (386 mph) in Gran Turismo 6. What’s especially impressive about this is that the car is grounded in real-word physics, and so achieving that speed is theoretically possible.
 
 
Fastest goal in PES 15
 
Gamer "Afro Gwada" scored with Real Madrid’s James Rodriguez in 4-sec, lobbing the keeper straight from kick-off.
 


2016 Guinness World Records Books


The new Guinness World Records 2016 book and Gamer's Edition are both out now.Order your copy here