Hours of fun for players as world computer game records smashed

The team took part in the games marathon to raise money for children's charity Games Aid, and hope the record-breaking effort will be the first of many.

They played for up to 43 hours at a stretch with just short comfort breaks, and are now awaiting official recognition from the Guinness Book of Records.

There was one casualty however, with gamer Phil Murphy having to retire after 22 hours suffering from dizziness and sore eyes. Despite the setback, Mr Murphy, 29, who had been trying to break the world record for the longest time playing a soccer game, stayed on to support the others.

He said: "I was feeling good up until 21 or 22 hours into it and I just started to feel dizzy. I'd made a pact with myself before it started that if illness was an issue I'd stop. I got a break and had a sleep and felt fine. It was amazing, I was glad I was part of such a great event, and especially raising so much money for Games Aid."

The group raised 555 for the charity via online donations and contributions from those who popped in to the venue - Twitch Games on Nicolson Street - during the record attempt.

Alan Teader, 28, of gaming website www.sticktwiddlers.com, which organised the event, said the marathon had been tough on those taking part. He said: "It was like something from a zombie movie by the end. Around the 24-hour mark everyone seemed to hit a bit of a wall and we thought 'I don't know if we're going to be able to do another 24 hours of this'. The first record was broken at 30 hours in, and then from there the records just started to topple. The last one was at the 43-hour mark and we all called it a day then."

The records broken included longest time spent playing a first person shooter game, longest time on a driving game, on a real-time strategy game, and on Grand Theft Auto IV. They will now send off videos, photographs and timesheets of the event to Guinness to have the records verified.

Mr Teader, a trainee teacher from Straiton, said the effort had inspired the group to consider future record attempts.

He said: "The big one is 109 hours on an action game - we have a few people who are quite interested in trying that one, and we're also looking at some of the more crazy ideas such as playing games at the North Pole. Obviously we'd have to get there first - that would be like a handheld game - and playing the highest (altitude] game and things like that. We want to become known as people who do these things for charity."

Alan McLevy of Twitch Games said the event had been enjoyable for all involved: "It was fantastic, the general atmosphere of the place was really amazing. "All the guys were really upbeat, it was a good fun weekend.

"I was expecting them to be quite silent after about 24 hours, but they were singing, doing karaoke. Now that we know that we can run it fairly easily, we'd definitely be up for doing more with them."