In a colorful room on the second floor of her home, University of Texas at Dallas alumna Linda Guillory MBA’04 keeps more than 2,500 vintage video-game systems that she’s collected throughout her adult life. But what started as a hobby in 2003 quickly grew into a more ambitious goal: to be recognized by Guinness World Records.
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to break a world record. My sister and I would get the book out and look for things we could break a record in, like jump-roping or hula-hooping,” Guillory said. “It was always in the back of my mind, but I never thought I would break it for vintage gaming systems.”
In 2016, after 13 years of scouring local secondhand stores, pawnshops and eBay, Guillory applied for the world record title in two categories: largest collection of LCD gaming systems and largest collection of playable gaming systems. But earning those titles wasn’t easy. Guillory had to provide documentation and pictures for every game, as well as a description of the differences between each game in a cataloging process that took almost three years to complete.
“It was tough, but at the end of the day, I loved it,” Guillory said. “Once I got it in my mind that I could actually have a Guinness world record, on those days when I wanted to be on vacation or doing something else, I just pushed through.”
Finally, in 2019, Guillory and a slew of volunteers officially counted each game on record before the UT Dallas grad was recognized by Guinness World Records with the two largest collections titles.
“It was like the light shining down from heaven — just an amazing feeling,” Guillory said. “Words can’t even describe it.”
Guillory will be featured in Guinness World Records 2022, where she hopes her collection will inspire others to achieve similar goals. Guillory’s world-record journey took her all over the world in search of one-of-a-kind games, including to the outskirts of Japan.
“It was tough, but at the end of the day, I loved it. Once I got it in my mind that I could actually have a Guinness world record, on those days when I wanted to be on vacation or doing something else, I just pushed through.”
Linda Guillory MBA’04
Now an assembly strategy manager for Texas Instruments Inc., Guillory traveled overseas often in previous roles and received tips from co-workers in Japan on where to find the more obscure video-game systems.
“I’d usually take about three days of vacation before I came back, and I’d search all over Japan,” Guillory said. “I spent hours lost, but I didn’t care. I’d often come back with anywhere from 25 to 60 games.”
Those games, among many others, are on display in curio cabinets in the room that holds Guillory’s collection. Alongside boxed sets of the rare Tiger King Kong and Tiger Space Invaders tabletop systems, her collection includes the Coleco Tabletop Pac-Man, Digital Derby, Conic Basketball, Tandy Cosmic 2000 Fire Away, Actronics Grandprix Turbo, Epoch Galaxy II and Toytronic Soopa Doopa.
“I try to collect games from when I was a kid, so I focus on systems from the 1970s to the 1980s,” she said.
Guillory’s affinity for gaming extends beyond just the joy and nostalgia of playing them. With an electrical engineering background, she also enjoys looking at the makeup of games and troubleshooting problems when they occur.
“When I started collecting, I purchased mostly broken games because I liked sitting down and fixing them,” Guillory said. “It gave me a sense of calm.”
Although she’s achieved her goal to break a Guinness world record, Guillory hasn’t stopped her search for games that hold meaning or bring joy to her daily life.
“It took me awhile to accept that I was a collector,” Guillory said. “Now, I enjoy looking for the games that hold memories and that I always wanted as a kid.”