Gamers Raise $420k For Charity!

In my last post I talked about the Awesome Games Done Quick Marathon that happened 6-12th Jan. This was a charity event done by speed runners to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, which was streamed live on twitch.tv. People could donate via the website.

I literally couldn't stop watching this stream! To see the games that you played as a kid being completed in the fastest times ever was amazing. The speedrunners did a great job and surpassed the previous year's donations of $150k in 3 days, and finished with an incredible total of $420k in donations! The stream averaged around 30k people watching at one time, hitting around 50k at its highest point.

What was really great about the stream was that it was really interactive letting donator choose categories that they could donate towards, and then the speed runners would complete the challenges. The games were really awesome, and really interesting to hear the speed runners commentary during the run. It was cool to see glitches and short cuts being taken, and different strategies used to find the fastest ways, including some really innovated ways of trying to avoid time wasting cut scenes.

Being able to do a glitch is one thing, but understanding why it happens is another thing. Its all in the detail as these runners keep trying to improve their times vs other runners. Its great to see these old games been brought back out from the back of the cupboard, dust blown, and now back in action, but this time to be played in a different way!

My personal favourites;

Breakdown777's 106% Complete Speedrun (Go to 8hr 7mins) on Super Meat Boy. This included a Skype call with the designers of the game who watched him play live!

Oasiz___ Grand Theft Auto 3 Speedrun (Go to 15hr 5mins).

Miles Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 Speedrun (Go to 6hr 40mins).

Znernicus Portal 2 Run

Werster's Crazy totally glitched the hell outta Pokemon Gold Run! (Go to 10hr)

Cosmo's 22 min Speedrun of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for N64 (Go to 5hr)

And finally... Die Hard for NES! Haha, funny glitch to the game, and its so shit its good! Was a reoccurring game that appeared, he's a race between 2 speedrunners who only learned the game when it was introduced to the marathon!



There should be a highlight reel coming out soon, so I'll put that up when its done. Its a really awesome event and great that they can raise so much money for charity. Streaming games is something that has really exploded in the last 2 years and its so great that we can play games and share it!