Back in 2010, late-night host Jimmy Fallon set a world record for “Most Video Game Consoles Played in One Minute,” as measured by the RecordSetter Book of World Records. That’s nine different consoles in 60 seconds – ranging from the Super Nintendo, to the Dreamcast, to the fabled Atari 2600.
But we all know the saying, and an intrepid Ohio gamer named Ryan Sullivan has done just that: Broken Fallon’s record with a whopping 13 different consoles played in under a minute.
Let’s get serious for a moment: You’re probably thinking the same thing we did upon reading the news. What, exactly, does one have to do to achieve a world record for most consoles played? Did Fallon or Sullivan hook all of their appendages up to strings and simultaneously work a bunch of gaming controllers at once or something?
After reading up on the actual rules that define the title of “Most Video Game Consoles Played,” and watching the official videos of both Fallon’s and Sullivan’s world-shattering feats, we can’t help but feel a little let down by the quote-unquote accomplishments.
To break the record, says RecordSetter, a gamer “must make forward progress in each game” during the attempt. It’s forbidden to play any console more than one time, gamers must use consoles, and gamers must provide video evidence of the feat. That’s it.
In other words, a person just has to play all of five seconds of a game on a particular console before jumping onto the next. We suppose that it’s a challenge to play all the consoles before your character dies, if a fighting game is used during the attempt (as is the case in Sullivan’s record-breaking romp). But even then, it’s unclear as to whether losing a round or getting killed in a game as a result of letting it sit there while one plays other consoles is even going to result in a disqualification.
Even if that’s true, well, one doesn’t have to use a game where one faces even the slightest potential of death to break the “world record.” It’s probably harder for a gamer to amass more than 13 different consoles in the same room than it is to physically break the record.
This “record” would sound a lot more interesting if the criteria forced a gamer to play all the different consoles at once – or, for that matter, if it was reshaped to simply be a record of “most games played simultaneously.” Watching gamers control a ton of accounts in a massively multiplayer online game (otherwise called “multiboxing”) seems as if it would involve a little more skill than what either Fallon or Sullivan have been credited for.
[PCMag]
