There are a couple of misprints/errors here and there, but overall this is a must-have for any gamer. The amount of content is unbelievable for the price you pay. Whether you only played Super Mario as a kid, or spend hours a day on WoW, you'll love how much this book has to offer...

The GWR-GE 2008 is the company's first effort to bring together a book for computer gamers, showing gaming records and facts. As such, it's a good dip of the toes into the big wide world of gaming.

The book itself is well presented. Not just a list of facts, it pleases the eye with easy-to-read double page spreads, boxes for additional information and plenty of graphics. One issue with the graphics - while they're mostly linked to the text, the references are not always easy to find and the order of the links is not clear.

The book itself is fairly platform-agnostic. It's split into game categories, and after providing an overview of the category history details some of the games in each category. This is where it starts falling down, with some notable gaps. Under action-adventure we read about Colossal Caves but no mention is made of Zork. And where is the Kings Quest series? Under role-playing games the Ultima series is mentioned, but not Wizardry!

The section on simulation games does at least mention Flight Simulator - but neglects the fact that combat flight simulators are an enormous market. And what about space combat? Nothing on Wing Commander, no X-Wing or anything else in this category.

In racing games, the Need for Speed series is mentioned briefly but really deserves more space. Hands up if you've played chess against your computer? Well sorry, but it doesn't rate a mention in the puzzle and maze section - no Chessmaster, no Kasparov or any other champion-branded games.

On the weird side, there's a section dedicated to "music games". Huh? These have been around for five minutes guys - surely there are better uses of this space.

So, in summary: a nicely presented overview of gaming and gaming records, but hopefully the next edition will be more thorough.

Guinness World Records Gamers Edition marks Guinness's first romp into the gaming culture. The gaming culture is bigger than it's ever been before. For the casual gamer, this book is like a starter kit to getting you into the gaming scene. There's a lot of good information scattered throughout the book. However, for gaming aficionados, there's not a lot of stuff here that you probably don't know. Just the same, it's not a bad book.

By the looks of the Guinness World Records, you'd probably think right out that this was a book for the younger gamers. The page layout and design is similar to those World Almanac for Kids books that became popular among the youth. While this may bother a few other gamers, it does show that the book is very inviting.

It begins with a lengthy introduction chapter. This will show some of the highlights of 2007, including talking about some of the heavy hitting games like Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy and Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Again, though, if you're big on the gaming scene and you keep up with the news, this is nothing new to you. Even a lot of what they mention is stuff that has been hammered into most gamers head time and time again.

After the introduction, there is a history of gaming. This showcases everything from the Magnavox Odyssey all the way up to the current generation involving the XBOX360, Playstation 3 and Wii. Afterwards, it goes into talking about some of the more mainstream consoles on an individual basis starting with the Nintendo 64 and Gamcube and ending with PC gaming. This section may have better had the consoles been talked about in the chronological order they were released. It is, after all, a history section. At least for all the hardware it gives you all the specs and a few factoids and some trivia concerning each console. These sections are also accompanied by crystal clear screenshots. At the end of the hardware history section there is a list of the top 5 bestselling games on each console. After all this is over with, we finally get into some of the records and trivia on some of the biggest selling gaming franchises in some of the industries most popular genres.

In the Record Breaking Games section is where the book can quickly become redundant for long time gamers, but a treat for newcomers to the gaming scene. It talks of some of the most popular games in the industry such as Halo, The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario Bros and Sonic as well as several other franchises that have made a huge impact in the gaming industry. Each section presents a few factoids to the series. Telling you things like whether or not it was the fastest selling in the series, the number of copies the bestselling in the series, etc. Perhaps the most interesting is when it shows you speed record completions for certain games. And despite all that, it isn't quite enough for some of these franchises. They only get two pages a piece. However, there are some interesting facts presented for many of them. This portion of the book spans through out several genres. From the Action/Adventure to the Puzzle genre.

As this section progresses there are also interviews, timelines and historical dates noted. It's also is decorated to the brim with pictures and screen shots.

After all this information, you get to see them count down the 100 best arcade games and then you see charts of high scores. The book ends with an index that'll help you find anything you need.

The biggest problem with the guide is, as I said earlier, that a lot of this information is not new to the experienced gamer. Much of the sales records and trivia has become common knowledge amongst most gamers. However, for many, I'm sure there's still a lot of information that's new to them.

You couldn't possibly expect the book to cover everything. There are many books with more comprehensive history and more trivia. But for what you get with this, it's detailed. It's not the Ultimate Gamer's Manual, but it serves as a great introduction and start for anyone curious to the video gaming culture.

My son loves this book, if you are a Guinness Book fan, then you'll love this one.

My name is Doug Parsons, and I'm an official adjudicator for Guinness World Records, so I felt the need to address some of the comments listed on this page.

The Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2008 was compiled by industry insiders who are experts in their field. All records and facts have been carefully researched and have been found to be up to Guinness World Records' rigorous standards. While any book of this scope is bound to contain a few grammatical or spelling oversights, all of the facts, statistics, and information within the book are certified to be true at the time of printing. [...]

As Guinness World Records is the global arbiter for official record keeping, and I am an adjudicator within the organization, I felt the need to address some of the concerns. Please be assured that Guinness World Records takes any comment, positive or negative, about our products seriously, and use them to ensure that future books will be filled with even more records and facts that our readers will enjoy.

And I have found multiple typos and false information. For example on page 13 it states that Battle revolution came out in december... when in fact it came out on June 25th.

On page 34 in top left where it says "FACTS" it has an extra "to" in there.. typo!

on page 41 it says PSP slim "launched on Sep 5, 2007. According to Sony, as of March 2007, more than 25 million PSP units have shipped". How the hell could they announce that half a year before PSP slim came out?

On Page 189 where it talks about Star Craft it states "Zerg's facial structure (3) was derived from dental X-rays of human skulls"... well if you look at picture labeled (3) it has the box cover.. which is a protoss not a zerg.

Its ridiculous how many typos this thing has.. i dont even know if I should trust the numbers they give.. what if they are typos? 100,000 may not be a big deal... but 9 is right next to 0. and 190,000 is almost double the number.

So far I have gone through 40 of the 250 pages.

And I have found multiple typos and false information. For example on page 13 it states that Battle revolution came out in december... when in fact it came out on June 25th.

On page 34 in top left where it says "FACTS" it has an extra "to" in there.. typo!

on page 41 it says PSP slim "launched on Sep 5, 2007. According to Sony, as of March 2007, more than 25 million PSP units have shipped". How the hell could they announce that half a year before PSP slim came out?

Its ridiculous how many typos this thing has.. i dont even know if I should trust the numbers they give.. what if they are typos? 100,000 may not be a big deal... but 9 is right next to 0. and 190,000 is almost double the number.

No, it's not a book of biblical proportions. The Guiness Gamers Edition is actually a very slick and easy to dip into book on gaming records. However it's not all sunshine. Many of the records featured really seem to be clutching at straws and seem more like tibits of trivia than genuine world records. The whole affair seems more aimed at kids and casual gamers than longterm gamers and really if you read it cover to cover you'd be done in no time at all. I don't think its in the same league as the current heavyweights Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games and Fox's The Video Games Guide, but I give it 3 stars for the quality of the presentation and the interesting facts.

I will keep this review short and sweet, as I feel I can rant about this book for quite some time: the history section is riddled with incorrect and wrongly-spotlighted information (a European computer takes up more space than the PSOne, Saturn and N64 region of the "fifth generation" section, for example), there's really no way of telling how some of their data is organized (the entire "Review of the Year" section has no context, unless I've severely missed it), along with some blatantly incorrect scores (after some research I know that it took more than five minutes to complete the original Super Mario Brothers, the last number I saw was 5:14).

Aside from the book being quite nicely bound, with full-color pages and a beautiful presentation (as is done with every Guinness book), this text is just... wrong. And I honestly see it as an insult to my favorite hobby. The whole piece makes me wonder if Guinness actually does any fact-checking.

Truly sad, and not worth wasting money on.

The back cover sums it all up, "A Gamers Bible". Great job by Guinness, all their writers, experts, photographers, and of course Twin Galaxies and all their staff, in which made this book possible.

For a price way less than a video game itself, I cannot see any reason whatsoever NOT to own this book. My only negative is now this will take away my "video playing time".