Fuel sets Guinness record as biggest console game ever

by Jason Dobson on May 22nd 2009 9:30AM

Codemasters' Fuel is big, and while some may argue that size doesn't matter, they're probably just jealous of the open-world racer's immense girth. In fact, the upcoming off-road racing game was recently crowned by Guinness World Records for having the largest playable environment in a console game ever with 5,560 square miles of accessible in-game terrain.

To help us wrap our heads around how big that is, the Codies say that's larger than Hong Kong, Singapore, St Lucia and the Isle of Man put together. Let's just hope developer Asobo (pictured) remembers to fill all that space with enough to do, else it's going to be a very long and boring ride. Are we there yet?

FUEL

Source

Tags: asobo-studios, codemasters, fuel, guinness, guinnessbookofworldrecords, Microsoft, racing, record, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (60)

This sounds like the perfect game for me, since I used to just sail in Wind Waker for fun.

And here i thought i was the only one.

I did that too but I wished the wind would change direction on its own every once in a while.

Anticipation UP
Anticipation UP
Excitement +100

Wouldn`t Super Mario Galaxy apply for this record? It`s in space, space is infinite. SAPCE!!!

I think you might have missed something here.

Yes, my morning medication.
My doctor? Dr. Greenthumbs.
My prescription? A dose of giggle with a side of hungry.

Then wouldn't the upcoming DS game "Infinite Space" take the record?

Grammatically? Yes.

If you're going down the "space" route, there are many games with more space to explore than Super Mario Galaxies. I have no idea if Eve would count, but Frontier had a realistically-modeled ENTIRE MILKY WAY for you to fly around.

ronEbear - oh you go to dr greenthumbs? I go to Dr Dre now after my relapse

What about Mass Effect? There are like 100 planets in a dozen galaxies or something.

But as far as actual land to explore, wouldn't that record go to GTA: San Andreas? Can't you explore like an entire state?

and san andreas fell into the pitfall of too much space. i wound up in the middle of nowhere and took me almost thirty minutes to get anywhere. this was before i started cheating.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned EVE Online yet. 5201 player-accessible systems, every inch of which can be traveled to given enough time.

@JB
Doesn't the word CONSOLE mean anything to you?

You should check out IGN's latest preview on FUEL. (( http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/983/983171p1.html )) This looks to be something special.

The sneaky part is that the only way to transverse this off-road racing game is in one of the vehicles, at speed, which means the subjective experience of the size of the world is no different from the experience of being in a smaller environment with ability to transverse it much more slowly. While this game world may be technically "large" it is still experientially no larger than any other game world.

Alright, lets say you're going at around 90mph in this game. And say you jog at 5mph in other games where your character doesn't have a vehicle, so the difference is a factor of 18. So... 5560/18 = 309. 309mi²? Yeah, that's just about the size of Oblivion, right? Wait, lemme go check. Oblivion = 16mi². So, yeah, pretty close.

Oblivion was 16 sq/m's.. but how long did it take to walk across from side to side, wasn't that an hour or so?

It takes roughly 80 hours to travel 5,560 miles at an average speed of 70mph...

People are going to be playing this game for a LONG time.

Not if the scenery is boring and repetitive.

Incorrect, that's SQUARE miles, not just miles, so if you think of 5560 square miles formed into a square, then it would be approximately 74.5 miles on each side. At your given rate that would take about an hour to get from one side to the other.

I think you need to retake math.

Area does not equate to linear distance unless you plan on traveling over every square inch of the board.

5560 square miles comes out to roughly a 75x75 mile box. So technically it would only take about an hour to get from one side of the board to another if they were going 70mph.

doh! radiantthought beat me to it.

Sure it might only take an hour to drive straight across the center of the world, but that would hardly allow you to see everything in the game. Unless of course you can simultaneously look our your driver and passenger side windows with a draw distance of 37 miles in each direction. Suffice to say that there will be areas of this game I never even get to encounter. Now just turn this into some kind of GTA clone and I'm sold!

Seriously though, I only play Motorstorm 2 when friends are over and we can do split screen, so I hope this game either has split screen multi, or the sheer fact that the world is large will make it compelling enough to bother exploring.

I misread it as miles, so sue me.

Um, Daggerfall anyone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daggerfall#Game_world

Couldn't have said it better.

Guiness world records are pathetic these days, as are the supposed records they cover. Doesn't matter if a game apparently has 5k square miles of playable terrain, what about scale, or the size of the character/object you're controlling? The later levels of katamari damacy cover the entire earth in terms of terrain, but you didn't see them getting a record.

IIRC there was a very old mmo whose game world was vastly larger than any game, even today. It was something rediculously large, we're talking real-life continent size. Why is it not mentioned?

Oh, thats right, because guiness world records are used purely for publicity now, and no actual research is done before declaring a world record. I wouldn't be surprised if you could just "buy", wink wink, a world record to use for publicity sakes.

If you dont believe me, feel free to google "Largest game environment". That looks like some tasty publicity right there, not to mention the article we're all commenting on right now.

Embarassing.

/rant

Ugh that was meant to be a reply to Junk Male

It wasn't mentioned because it was for the PC. This is the award for CONSOLES.

Maybe you were thinking Daggerfall, at 161600 square kilometers.

Final fantasy XI is pretty big, I wouldnt know exactly how big, but its a fair walk to cover all the zones and levels, etc

I like how they precise "console." If PC games were competing, they'd have to face World of Warcraft, or Spore.

If Codemasters were actually creating this game, I'd be excited. Instead, its some developer who's never made a racing game before, so I have my doubts.

"that's larger than Hong Kong, Singapore, St Lucia and the Isle of Man put together"

Why pick those places in particular? Seems rather random.

Maybe they've just scanned the OS maps, & had a computer translate the lines, arrange the maps together & job done.. all they have to do is add stuff in....

i agree, it would have been much easier to just say "roughly the size of Connecticut"

Whatever ....Its just a game and it looks to be a great one at that. I cant wait to pick his one up.

That is a whole lotsa roaming around

Wow, if you're gonna give us something to help us "wrap our heads around how big that is" why not use something a little bit more familiar. I don't know about the rest of joystiq's readers, but I've never been to any of those places. I've also never been to the state of Connecticut, but at 5,543 square miles, it's pretty damn close too.

But seriously, how many library of congress is that?

Once you get the chance, visit them, they are all superb places.

isle of man superb? lolz...

I hear the Isle of Man is nice if you like road races. (:

Let me paraphrase Gehondra: That doesn't make any friggin' sense, Junk Male!

Guinness really doesn't have much to do on a day to day basis, do they? Lets start giving out awards for fake millage.

I just won the award for thinking of the tallest man ever!!

Yeah, well I just thought of the the world`s shortest giant.

Congratulations, a representative from the Guinness Book is already in route to your house to present you with your award that was just authorized at Staples. "Wow, that was fast!" you might say. Well the good folks at Guinness Book are always driving in circles around major metropolitan areas in order award you for creating terrible lazy accomplishments.

That's A LOT of playable space...

wait for it...

wait for it.....

FOR ME TO POOP ON!!!!!!

Remember in ATV off-road fury when you would leave the actual race track and just head off in some direction? Eventually you'd run into the "edge" of the level and it would catapult you back towards the center. I wonder in Fuel how they handle the ends of the world. Is it one big island, or partly bordered by steep mountains, really sturdy fences?

I am so buying this the day it comes out! I love racing especially in expansive environments! but as some one else has stated Daggerfall has the largest environment. Here's a quote from wiki: "Daggerfall is the largest Elder Scrolls game to date, featuring a game world estimated as being 161,600 square kilometres (62,394 square miles or 40,400,000 acres) with over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall

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Fuel sets Guinness record as biggest console game ever

FUEL

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