To coincide with the press release below, Guinness also created a video for their Pokemon family entry. While there are many obscure records, I still live in amazement of the hardcore Donkey Kong players, with the record holder amassing 1,090,000 points. If you’ve ever played the Donkey Kong arcade game, you know that’s no small feat.

WORLD’S MOST PROLIFIC POKÉMON FAMILY LEADS THE PACK OF EXTRAORDINARY VIDEO GAME RECORDS, FACTS AND FIGURES IN NEW GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS® 2012 GAMER’S EDITION

Latest “Video Game Bible” Scores Points With Features on Angry Birds, Top Fighting Games, Most Expensive Gaming Records, Fitness Games, Biggest Gaming Fails, and More

NEW YORK – January 3rd, 2012 – The family that plays together definitely stays together… and probably catches them all! The newest edition of the “Video Game Bible” – Guinness World Records® 2012 Gamer’s Edition – hits stores today with the most comprehensive collection of video game records ever known including the most prolific Pokémon playing family in the world – the Arnolds. The ‘Frankfort Five’, hailing from the Illinois suburb outside of Chicago, are Pokémon prodigies who rank as some of the world’s greatest players each year during the official Pokémon Video Game Championships, earning them the title of “Largest Competitive Pokémon Videogame Family”.

The Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer’s Edition contains something for players of all kinds. Notching the latest high-water mark in the seemingly never-ending battle for Donkey Kong supremacy, New York City’s Hank Chien earned the “Highest Score on Donkey Kong” with 1,090,000 points. Mobile mavens will love the spread on Angry Birds, the “Best-Selling Mobile Series” (more than 250 million downloads) and the app with the “Most Days Spent as the Best-Selling App in iTunes Store” (275 consecutive days).

Gamers with a little extra cash can spend $1,242 of their hard-earned money on the “Most Valuable Kinect Sensor”, a special peripheral encrusted with 6,000 Swarovski crystals. Brassy brawlers will be knocked out by an entire section devoted to Fighting Games including Mortal Kombat, Marvel Vs. Capcom and Dead or Alive, while the growing genre of “Lifestyle & Fitness” games boasts achievements like “Most People Exercising to a Videogame” (783 people).

Once again, this year features many women making their mark in the interactive realm. Iowa’s Elizabeth Bolinger preferred to dance her way into the record books, where she earned the title for “Most Prolific Dancing Game High Scorer” with top scores in 85 songs spanning across Dance Central, Just Dance and Just Dance 2 and she’ll be attempting a new high score on popular gaming network G4 in mid-January. Jennifer Hale grabbed the record for “Most Prolific Voice Actor” for lending her voice to 129 video games over the course of almost two decades.

As always, Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer’s Edition is chock full of lists and quizzes that are sure to get gamers talking. One of the featured lists takes a look at the “Top 50 Video Game Endings” of all-time as voted by more than 13,000 Guinness World Records readers. Game historians can also test their knowledge with the “Video Game Tagline Quiz” questions found at the bottom of each page, and read features on professional video game players, the biggest “Gaming Fails”, a PS3 vs. XBOX 360 comparison and much more!

“The 2012 book is the most comprehensive Gamer’s Edition we’ve ever released,” said Gaz Deaves, Guinness World Records Gaming Editor. “Chronicling the video game world’s grandest successes, most embarrassing failures and everything in between, this year’s edition will immerse casual fans with an encyclopedia of interactive info and impress the hardcore crowd with its detailed analysis.”

Guinness World Records 2012 Gamer’s Edition is available now in the US for a suggested retail price of $14.99 and available in the UK on January 19th.

For more information on gaming record breaking, please visit www.guinnessworldrecords.com/gamers.

In good old ARG (alternate reality game) tradition they have started this game off with a couple of clues, in this case a fictional Mayor called Juan Ramon has put a video on youtube and created a pdf letter to share.

The pdf seems to have some writing hidden in it that alludes to some dates and times, who knows maybe there is even clues as to a prize or something, you would hope

Here’s a link to the pdf

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, I’m also interested in if they actually hired an ARG type agency as well as the ad agency.

Some more posts on ARG’s as marketing tools:

Nine Inch Nails ARG

Beyond Viral Marketing, engagement, narrative and passion

More on ARG’s

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Google Earth Provides Updates, Answers

Matt Manolides, a GIS specialist, provides a list that goes on . . . and on . . . and on.  Roughly 57 places (exactly 57, if I didn’t lose count) in Google Earth have been updated to a “new high resolution,” and about 44 have benefited from “updated imagery.”  Only four regions have received “updated terrain,” but at least those are easier to keep track of.

Google was pretty much equal-opportunity in its approach to these updates – its major headings name the U.S., South America, France, Italy, Germany, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East/Africa, Asia, and Oceania.  And yes, I realize there’s quite a bit of overlap in those areas, but then again, the world’s a rather big place.

This made a lot of Google’s update-related questions relatively hard to answer.  For example, I never could have guessed where Cointreau was invented – I’m generally a Guinness man, and have no experience with this “unique premium spirit made from orange peels” (in Angers, France).  On the other hand, the clue about a “Lord of the Terrain” was a clear nod to “The Lord of the Rings” and New Zealand.

In any event, the updating is all done . . . until next time.  After all, even though Google Earth revisited all these places, there are still a lot more out there.

Lenssen, the resident guru at Google Blogoscoped, constructed a tool that looks over eight years’ worth of releases for the word of your choice; the Analyzer then puts together a graph showing how often the word has been used.

Yet an analogy might be appropriate at this point.  When I talk about Guinness, it’s because I like it.  When I talk about Coors Light, it’s because I don’t.  So the fact that a word is mentioned – or even the number of times the word comes up – isn’t necessarily an indicator of how Google feels about it, but the use of Lenssen’s tool can still lead to some interesting observations.

A graph corresponding to the word “censor,” for example, only deviates from zero percent one time between 1999 and 2007.  “Does this mean Google doesn’t censor?” asks Lenssen.  “No, it mostly means Google in their press releases never really talked about the subject of censorship (or rather, the word ‘censorship’), nor explicitly mentioned anti-censorship tools.”

Google also hasn’t talked much about evil, its own Googleplex, or Yahoo (in recent years, at least).  You’ll have to interpret them for yourself, but the Google Press Release Analyzer does a great job of bringing in some facts.