Wii game scores an effin' dubious world record

Zombie hunting title House of the Dead: Overkill has more f-words than any other game.

House of the Dead: Overkill has been named as the most profane video game ever for its extremely liberal use of the F-bomb.

The gory game for Nintendo's Wii console - known for its family-orientated cutesy titles - is a zombie kill-fest that carries an R18 certificate in New Zealand.

Guinness World Records announced yesterday that it had been award the dubious gong for 'most swearing in a video game'.

It features 189 uses of the f-word in its three hours of "relatively limited dialogue" said video games manager for Guinness World Records 'Gamer Edition' Gaz Deaves.

This equates to roughly three percent of all dialogue in the game.

"This record category pre-existed for movies, music and television, but The House of the Dead: Overkill is the first video game to be awarded the title in the Gamer's Edition," said Deaves. "It's a mark of the times."

"It is a dubious honour to receive such an accolade working in an industry where so often the fruits of your labours are derided and dismissed for being puerile or irresponsible, but in the case of The House of the Dead: Overkill a little puerility was the order of business, said the game's writer Jonathan Burroughs.

"Parodying the profane excess of grindhouse cinema was Headstrong Games' objective and I am flattered that this record acknowledges that we not only rose to that challenge, but entirely exceeded it."

The record will be short-listed for inclusion in next years' Gamer's Edition, which carries a section specifically for video game controversy including gems such as:

# Greece was the first country to ban all video games, it lasted two months in 2002.

# Mexico banned Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 in the state of Chihuahua because its governor was offended by the way the region and its people were portrayed.

# New York City had the longest ban in gaming history, when in 1942 its mayor banned all pinball machines. It lasted for 34 years.

- NZHERALD STAFF