Guinness Book of Records is beckoning for game players

The Guiness Book of Records will include video game high scores in its 1998 edition to settle playground arguments once and for all.

Six games have been chosen to represent the gaming industry across three dominant formats - Playstation, Saturn, and Snes. The games are: Tekken 2, Ridge Racer, Sega Rally, Virtua Cop II, Super Mario Kart, and Donkey Kong Country II: Diddy's Quest.

Guinness decided to include game scores after streams of inquiries from children asking what the highest scores were in various games. The results will be printed in the 1998 edition published in October 1997.

High scorers will be invited to strictly adjudicated regional heats to make sure competitors don't use cheat codes, and then onto national finals, then an international championship.

Radion Automatic, features editor of Saturn Magazine, said: "It can only be good for the industry and give it publicity. The Brits would have as good a chance as anybody in getting the records because we've got that gaming culture."

The chosen games are likely to change each year because fickle gamers tend to tire of high scoring on old releases. "Some of these games are quite old," said Automatic.