An Irish gaming group (Gunna Scréach) has both broken and set a new Guinness World Record for the longest video-game marathon on a first-person shooter (FPS), playing Halo: Reach non-stop for an epic 42 hours on Xbox 360, culminating at 8.15am on Saturday, 19 February.
The four guys – Wexford native Mark Gethings and Athlone natives Tony Flynn, Lorcan McKenna and Pierce McKenna – set out at 2.15pm last Thursday to break the up-to-now reigning 33-hour record reached by a UK-based team (Rustler’s Gamesafe) in October last year. That team had achieved its 33-hour feat via Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Here’s a YouTube snippet showcasing the moment when Gunna Scréach broke the 33-hour record at 11.15pm on Friday, 18 February 2011, with Europe’s The Final Countdown blasting out in the background.
Gunna Scréach (Irish for blazing guns) also helped raise funds for the Midlands Simon Community in tandem with the event.
Playing Halo: Reach non-stop for 42 hours
Playing for 42 hours solid in Athlone’s Golden Island Shopping Centre, the four guys also gave the public the chance to play head-to-head with them, charging €2 per game.
The Gunna Scréach team members had to play by some stringent rules set by Guinness World Records. Firstly, they could only take a five-minute break each hour, with at least one team member always playing Halo: Reach. And while the guys could eat on the job, getting some sleep proved to be a bit more tricky.
Speaking on Thursday, gamer Gethings said there was the option of saving up your five minutes to then take a nap. However, he said the team was “probably not going to sleep.”
The gamers also had to log all of their activity for Guinness during the event.
Gethings said: “We have to have photographers taking photos and the entire event has to be recorded on video. Guinness just needs the highlights but you have to record everything in case they request it. We have three standalone cameras filming the event.”
