A Dubai Police employee has set a Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Nintendo games and memorabilia.

The 33 year old Ahmed Bin Fahad has been collecting and preserving his favorite Nintendo games for the past twenty years, and has spent more than AED 1.5 million on the 8000 items that he now holds.

Ahmed Bin Fahad has been collecting Nintendo games for the past 20 years.

“Some of these tapes are like gold,” he tells 7DAYS. “It is very expensive hobby but I will continue to do it.”

Fahad has travelled all over the world to complete his collection, making multiple trips to Japan, Germany and Singapore. He also imports games and items, and while some of them are expensive, others are a bit hard to source. “Sometimes the cargo cost is higher than the game itself,” he says.

He keeps the collection in a large 13mx6m extension of his house. “It is like my showroom – at home we call it ‘the tent’, he adds.

Explaining the start of his incredible journey in collecting Nintendo games, he recounts, “I first saw a game at my uncle’s house and I kept asking my parents to buy one. Almost a year later I got a console as a gift.” Since then, Fahad has been preserving games for his ever growing collection. “For most of the games I buy at least two items – one I use and one I keep.”

“Sometimes if I find a stock of five or six consoles I buy them all just in case any of them are damaged – then I would have spare parts,” he adds.

As for his decision to enter the Gunnies World Records, he says, “I wanted to set this record to give a message to the world that Arabs are not only interested in speeding cars and flashy things.”