With clenched knuckles and a list of combo moves, Santa Cruz’s own Melissa Estuesta made her way this month into the Guinness Book of World Records for “longest videogames marathon playing a fighting game,” with exactly 32 hours, 5 minutes and 47 seconds of continuous time playing Mortal Kombat.
With clenched knuckles and a list of combo moves, Santa Cruz’s own Melissa Estuesta made her way this month into the Guinness Book of World Records for “longest videogames marathon playing a fighting game,” with exactly 32 hours, 5 minutes and 47 seconds of continuous time playing Mortal Kombat. On June 7, Melissa joined her three teammates—Lance Moose, Cris Bryant and Paul Chillino—at the Mecca of gaming conventions, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, in an attempt to break the previous record of 30 hours. “I just got pulled into it via Twitter,” explains Estuesta. “[Competition sponsor] CraveOnline posted they were looking for a female gamer. I sat on the idea for two days and thought, ‘You know, I’ll regret not trying if I pass this up.’” An avid gamer, Estuesta grew up watching her older siblings play video games and had to get into the action. “I’m a techno geek and I find a lot of the time I’m underestimated because I’m a female,” she says.
Luckily, those hours of childhood gaming paid off at E3. The rules were simple: the four gamers were split into two teams. Each player was allowed a 10-minute break for every hour of game play that could be taken on the hour or accumulated over time (play for four hours straight and get a very needed 40-minute rest), as long as every person was playing within the last hour. And to answer the question all game geeks are wondering, the players chose random character settings so nobody could be cheap by always playing certain moves. Estuesta says that if anyone breaks their record, the team will happily go for a rematch, but in the meantime, she’ll keep tapping buttons. Game on.
