The Guinness World Records 2009 Gamer's Edition goes on sale today in the UK. It's a fascinating book, but sadly it's a bit out of date already. Well, maybe in one instance - we've just broken the World Record on one of the best racing games ever made: Sega Rally Championship on the Sega Saturn.

The previous record (2'30"80) for a 3-lap run on the Desert course stood since 2002 and was held by Christiano T Assumpcao from Brazil (printed in the book). But, despite our pretty crappy first run of 2'33"21, we figured we were in with a shout. Three days of practise later, we finally achieved a 2'30"73. And yes, it was very, very difficult.

Above: The moment we crossed the line and broke the world record

And because a screenshot isn't proof alone, here's the in-car actual run as it happened, with cutaway footage from the replay.

Our run was witnessed by several people outside the GR team, including the editor of Gamesmaster magazine. And, after sending the unedited in-car video and our witness statements to the Guinness World Records, we got this:

If anyone out there has a Saturn still and fancies a pop, it's probably possible to beat this time. We did drop a tenth of a second or so on the penultimate corner, getting far too close to the wall for comfort in the chicane (at the time we thought we'd hit it). And we also only used a standard Saturn pad - a steering wheel would probably yield smoother cornering and therefore better times.

Of course there are also records for newer games. And you can propose your own records too - so if you reckon you can do the first level of Gears of War 2 faster than anyone else, why not try applying? Or maybe we could get Mikel to go for most successive knife kills in Killzone 2...

The book is on sale now, RRP £15. It's available from Amazon now.

04 Feb, 2009

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