After an incredible grand slam performance as far as charity drives are concerned, I would be remiss if I didn’t follow up my post from last Saturday with a few final thoughts now that the truly incredible Mario Marathon, in its fourth year, has finally come to an impressive close…
First and foremost, this year’s grand total – $110,642.
(…actually, closer to $112k, as donations have apparently still been trickling in between now and when it officially ended around 2am last night…)
I’ve got to say, this year I caught myself watching the marathon more and more as the time progressed, to the point where I think I’d like to try and get a little more involved next year. It kind of reminded me of the old PBS pledge drives I remember from growing up where Mom would call in and donate $10, and then we’d sit by the TV and wait to hear our names announced by Captain Banana. Mario Marathon seems to have a great fan community going – I don’t think I logged in once and saw a live viewership of less than about 1,500 people, so it might be nice just to interact with everyone a little more next year when Mario Marathon 5 comes along.
Or who knows, maybe I’ll try to set some time aside and actually play along with the guys on some of the games! This is the second year that I’ve been inspired to pull out Super Mario Galaxy and explore after the Marathon had concluded, so it might be kind of cool to have a laptop sitting nearby with the chatroom open and play along! Either way, it’s such a great cause and it’s really awesome to see how much the entire crew puts into making this amazing fundraising effort such a fantastic success. It’s very clear from all of the prizes and contests and giveaways that hosting Mario Marathon is a lot more than just streaming video games for 5 days straight, and we can only hope that the guys had enough fun this year to want to continue the tradition once again in 2012!
I don’t know, but judging from the credits it seems like everyone probably had a pretty good time… 😉
Once again – a lifetime total of $234,931 for four years of playing Super Mario Bros. Wow.