10 Record Breaking Facts That You Didn't Know About Video Games

Here are some very interesting facts about video games over the past 30 years.

1. The best selling video game in 2007 was Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. It was published by Microsoft and it came out on the 25th of September 2007. In the first week of sales, Halo 3 made over $300 million. It has a co-operative campaign mode and very good online play.
2. The first games console ever created was the Magnavox Odyssey and was launched in 1972. It worked through a television set and was powered by batteries. To begin with, it did not sell very well but in 1975 the Magnavox Odyssey 100. However, it had two games available, Tennis and Hockey. It also lacked digital onscreen scoring and players had to use plastic sliders built into the console.
3. The best selling Playstation 2 game of all time is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. This sold a total of 15 million copies on thePS2. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the third best selling PS2 game and that sold roughly 14.2 million copies. With these great games, Grand Theft Auto is the most successful video game series on the PS2.
4. The first fighting game to feature 3D simulation was Tekken. It was much more sophisticated than previous fighting games such as Street Fighter and Mortal Combat. This 3D simulation has continued with all Tekken games up to date.
5. The most successful first-person shooter of all time was Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64. Probably because of it's superb gameplay which includes many varied objectives, variety of multiplayer options and original stealth gameplay, it has sold over 8 million copies, putting it next to Halo 2 as the best selling first-person shooter game.
6. The Largest land-based game area is in The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall which was release for the PC in August 1996. The Player in this Role Playing Game (RPG) can explore a fully 3D environment that is 263,492 square kilometres. This is roughly twice the size of Great Britain. Again, The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall also has the largest amount of NPC's (Non player Characters) in an RPG. It contains 750 000 other people each of whom can be spoken to and each one has their own opinion of you.
7. The longest title for a strategy name is The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth 2 - The Rise of the Witch King. It may possibly even be the longest name for a game in the English language.
8. The best selling PC game of all time is The Sims which has sold 16 million units since it was launched in 2000. Electronic Arts' original projections for the game were only 160 000 units.
9. The largest number of car manufactures in a racing game are in Gran Turismo 4 with 721 different types of cars from 90 marques. It may be unlikely that any future games will be able to beat this amount of cars.
10. And finally, the best selling video game of all time is the original Super Mario Bros, released by Nintendo on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1985. Since then, it has sold a staggering 40.2 million copies worldwide; 10 million more than the second best selling game, Tetris (on the Gameboy). This figure includes copies of the game sold as “bundles” with Nintendo Systems.