Video Game Marathons for Charity

July 8, 2009 8:09 AM

The 2009 Super Mario Marathon will kick off this Friday as three gamers from Lafayette, Indiana jump their way through 25 years of Mario games to benefit the Child's Play Charity. The marathon will be broadcast live online and you can track their level progress at the site. Viewers of the event will have the opportunity to win some Mario-themed prizes. If old-school RPGs are more your thing, the Final Fantasy Marathon, also live online, also with prizes, will be kicking off July 17 to benefit ACT Today.
posted by Otis (12 comments total)

Those gamers are going to have really interesting dreams for a few days afterward.


When I started to see a hex-grid form in my dreams I knew to stop playing Alpha Centuari right before bed. I just play Civ 4 now with the grid turned off
posted by The Whelk at 8:12 AM on July 8, 2009

The Whelk: I eventually had to quit playing ADOM for this very same reason. I was dreaming in ASCII and it... well it was rather embarrassing.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:18 AM on July 8, 2009

Not nearly as great an idea as the Desert Bus Marathon a few years back, where some now-scarred-for-life gamers played the infamous Desert Bus minigame from the unreleased Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors for the Sega CD, which was intentionally the most boring game ever made, for five. Straight. Days. They raised $70,000 for Child's Play by getting people to donate a certain amount of money per hour they had to play.
posted by DecemberBoy at 8:34 AM on July 8, 2009

Agreed, DecemberBoy. There's something to donating money to forcing people to keep playing a horrible game. I'm much less inclined to donate to the Mario Marathon. I'd donate to Child's Play, but playing through each Mario game is a reward by itself.
posted by explosion at 8:37 AM on July 8, 2009

Why don't they play New Super Mario Brothers (on the DS)? Or Super Mario World 2?

Or, for that matter, all of the Super Mario Lands on the Gameboy. Perhaps not as "sit around the TV and watch" as the living room console games are, I think they still count as Mario games.
posted by graventy at 8:47 AM on July 8, 2009

graventy, they say in the FAQ that they are playing everything on Wii Virtual Console. Maybe those aren't available.
posted by mkb at 9:12 AM on July 8, 2009

they say in the FAQ that they are playing everything on Wii Virtual Console. Maybe those aren't available.

I can accept that limitation, I guess, which eliminates all the handheld games. It doesn't excuse SMW2 (which I suppose is arguably a Yoshi game) or The Lost Levels, even.

I like my marathons more hardcore, I guess. This just sounds like a fun weekend.
posted by graventy at 9:17 AM on July 8, 2009

...old-school RPGs... ...Final Fantasy...

God I'm old.
posted by Artw at 9:31 AM on July 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

A Kirby marathon would be killer.
posted by LSK at 9:52 AM on July 8, 2009

Cool, there's a Mario marathon. But holy S there's a Final Fantasy marathon? And they only have 168 hours to play? Talk about speed trials. I already get (slightly) upset when I have to leave the game and let the timer go up while I'm not there. I can't imagine how neurotic I'd be under those conditions.

Let me get to a save point, woman!


Though to be fair if you skipped alot of the dialogue and FMV scenes the whole thing would be much faster.
posted by scrutiny at 10:49 AM on July 8, 2009

From my memory of the Lost Levels, including them would probably take the better part of the marathon... I once stayed up with a friend on a Lost Levels marathon. It was a drinking game: we had to drink every time we died. This happened with astounding frequency. Certain levels in the game require one to run full bore ahead and make super jumps onto tiny, moving platforms timed exactly for running full speed. This wouldn't sound so bad, except that some maneuvering was necessary to make other super jumps prior to said platform. So jump from exactly THIS pixel to hit the block way out there, then jump again and slow down JUST ENOUGH to land on the one-unit wide block in the middle of nothing (and off the right side of the screen when you start the jump!) but still be going fast enough to super jump off of that block to the next block, and from there to god-knows-what.

Oh yeah, and fuck poison mushrooms.
posted by kaibutsu at 9:33 PM on July 8, 2009

When I started to see a hex-grid form in my dreams I knew to stop playing Alpha Centuari right before bed. I just play Civ 4 now with the grid turned off

I get that with Diablo 2. Speaking of, Whelkypants, do you play?

(and I know! your package has not yet been sent)

(I am a douche)
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 9:50 PM on July 8, 2009