Melbourne attempts cosplay world record

The Australian city of Melbourne attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the largest crowd dressed as video game characters yesterday. The record attempt, which drew 470 video game cosplayers to Melbourne's Federation Square, is currently waiting on approval from Guinness.

The Australian city of Melbourne attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the largest crowd dressed as video game characters yesterday.

The record attempt, which drew 470 video game cosplayers to Melbourne's Federation Square, is currently waiting on approval from Guinness. If successful, Melbourne will take the world record title from the US state of Wisconsin, which currently holds the record with a crowd of 425 cosplayers.

The event was organized by the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), who advertised the event in newspapers and over Facebook.

"We're doing the event to raise awareness of Australia's video game industry," Shawn Marinakis, a first-year art coordinator at AIE told Polygon.

"AIE is putting on the event and we want everyone to know that Australia does make computer games, there is an industry, and we can help you get there."

Marinakis said he was expecting 200 people to turn up and was surprised that more than 400 cosplayers attended the event, especially since it was raining. Cosplayers brought umbrellas and raincoats and waited patiently for the world record attempt to commence.

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There are strict guidelines in place for world record attempts. In the case of yesterday's cosplaying record, every cosplayer had to enter a cordoned-off zone one at a time while event organizers did a count. Once everyone was in the world record zone, they had to remain in costume for twelve minutes while cameras filmed them.

The video will now be sent to Guinness for approval. While Melbourne has the numbers to break the record, they can still be disqualified if it is found that anyone was not in full costume while they were in the world record attempt zone, or if someone entered or left the zone during the 12 minute period. The result is expected within the coming weeks.