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A Fanshawe College student is out to make a big mark with a teeny, tiny arcade machine not much bigger than the width of a few rings you’d wear on your finger.
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It’s not officially a Guinness World Record yet – but unofficially, second-year electromechanical engineering student Victoria Korhonen set the world record for constructing the world’s smallest arcade machine at an evaluation at the school’s main campus in east London on Tuesday morning.
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“I was just determined to break a Guinness record,” Korhonen said of her inspiration for building the device. “At first, I was going to go with the world’s largest arcade controller, but it’s way more cost-effective to go smaller than larger.”
The 26-year-old Londoner’s tiny arcade machine – on which players can play the classic game Pong – is smaller than the Guinness record holder’s dimensions of 66.5-millimetres tall, 33.56-mm long and 29.93-mm wide.
Multiple measurements were done Tuesday, and Korhonen’s contraption was smaller in each category with average measurements of 64.21-mm tall, 30.71-mm deep and 26.79-mm wide. The tiny device weighed just 30.02 grams at its most favourable weigh-in, though Korhonen said weight wasn’t a factor in the record.
About 175 students between grades 7 to 12 from a dozen Thames Valley District school board schools, at the college attending various trades-focused entrepreneurial workshops, filled the seats of one of its lecture halls to watch the measurements take place.
After a drumroll from the audience while civil engineering technology program coordinator Matt Carson measured the tiny arcade machine, Korhonen exclaimed, “We’re good!” to an eruption of applause.
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“I think it’s a pretty awesome technological feat to do that and produce something on such a small scale that is operational and can play and operate a known game,” Carson said.
Of her spot as unofficial record holder, Korhonen said: “It feels fantastic. I was very worried. I kept thinking that overnight it would grow twice the size or something like that.”
If all goes smoothly with Guinness officials, the tiny machine will be Korhonen’s second entry in the book of world records. Her Saunders secondary school photography class set the record for the world’s longest selfie stick, beating the mark held by actor Ben Stiller.
“Ours was 36 feet, his was 28 feet, and he did that for the (Zoolander 2) premiere in 2016,” Korhonen said.
With “at least 20 ideas” in mind, Korhonen said she wants to break more records, such as redesigning an SG90 motor – a small, lightweight motor commonly found in remote-controlled gadgets – from scratch, and then “breaking the world’s tallest humanoid robot record,” she said, noting also that once the motor is redone, “you can break tons of records.”
Korhonen said there’s still a process to finalize her status of official world record holder for the miniature arcade machine, but she hopes to hear back in about three months.
bwilliams@postmedia.com
@BrianWatLFPress
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