I’m hoping to get into Guinness. Seems that they no longer need any sort of actual metric, just someone to throw some cash their way to put an ad in their good book. From GameSpot.

Lara Croft has today been awarded a Guinness World Record that recognises her as the “most successful human video game heroine.” The Tomb Raider star won the prize for “transcending the boundaries of video games and becoming a recognisable figure in mainstream society”.

Okay, fine. Most successful how? Most units sold? Most unwatchable movies derived? Most lame cartoon porn drawn by middle schoolers? What yardstick, exactly, does Ms. Bloodrayne need to aspire to in order to take this crown?

“It is a mark of the phenomenal success of the Tomb Raider series that 10 years after the first game release, Lara Croft is more popular now than ever,” commented Eidos’ Ian Livingstone.

Really? I thought perhaps she was most popular back when she was every desktop at 3DO (’she’s not porn, she’s competitive analysis!’) and Maxim was doing centerfolds of her. To be honest, if Raph hadn’t mentioned getting the game on his blog, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the game’s release. Although, this cartoon did make me chuckle.

Sorry if I’m being metrics-minded here. I kinda thought that was, you know, the whole point of the ‘World Record’ thing.