Viewers Choice Marathon

Our first marathon is going to be part of a community effort raising money to fight pediatric cancer. We will be gaming for 24 hours starting October 17th at 8am CST and playing until October 18th 8am CST. The great thing about this marathon is that you can be a part of it! If you would also like to participate, create your own individual site. You can then join team Ninfest after creating your page. Tell all your family and friends about it to help raise awareness and they can donate directly to your individual page or the page set up for Ninfest. If you would rather make a donation, go to https://waystogive.texaschildrens.org/netcommunity/ninfestnation and click the red 'donate now' button on the right hand side. Join us or donate, either way, thanks for all your support! For more information go to http://extralife.sarcasticgamer.com .

We'll also let you know what Ninfest plans to do extra for the marathon in a couple days so stay plugged to the News Channel.

It's great that this opportunity has arose and even though we aren't fully prepared to do our first marathon, we just couldn't pass up this chance. We will be playing games for 24 hours starting October 17th at 8am cst to help raise donations for Texas Children's Hospital's fight against pediatric cancer. We have set up a UStream page that will allow you to view and chat with us in the Marathon Channel as well as placing a button link on the home page that will take you directly to our UStream page. We may or may not have Skype interaction with the viewers.

Not fully prepared means just this. We have limited equipment so we might just have a live feed of the game, no picture in picture of us playing. Also, since it's right around the corner there looks to be a schedule conflict with Cheator, meaning it's just me and you guys. A one man marathon for 24 hours? Yeah, I can do it. I'll be counting on you guys to keep me awake! Cheator may still participate but at the time it doesn't look good. If it is just me I'll have to find a way to interact with you guys. For instance I might talk with you guys in between levels or games, but not during.

There won't be a theme to this marathon. Instead I'll be playing any game you request from the list found in the Marathon Channel. I'm not a master at all these games so I will play a game until I get a game over (and feel retrying is not a good idea), or beat the game. If you want to request a game from the list, add it to a comment here or send it in an email to ninfest@me.com. I'll also take requests during the marathon.

Finally, to help bring in even more money for this occasion, we will donate all profits made from the Ninfest Nation Gear Shop to Texas Children's Hospital for the entire month of October!

If you'd like to make a donation please go to the Marathon Channel or our event page and click the red donate now button. Donations as little as $1 will be greatly appreciated.

I can't believe it's already here! The marathon starts this Saturday, October 17th at 8am CST. I hope you guys can stop by and say hello. Just jump into the Marathon Channel at ninfest.com to watch. Tell your friends and family about it to help us raise at least $192 for Texas Children's Hospital. Thanks guys, you're the greatest!

What a wonderful experience it was for Ninfest to put on our first marathon. Dubbed the Viewers Choice Marathon, we played games for 24 hours straight and broadcasted live in the Marathons Channel. We played Super Mario Bros. 3, T2: The Arcade Game, TMNT 2: The Arcade Game, Punch Out feat. Mr. Dream, Mortal Kombat 2, Street Fighter 2, Wave Race 64, Super Mario 64, Star Fox, Mega Man 2, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, and Wario World, beating all except T2. We ran 2 feeds, one of the game and one of us playing, combining for a total of 183 viewers and 3 followers. We had some good conversation going on in the UStream chat which kept us going into the late night hours. Unfortunately I forgot to put one of the UStream chat boards on the website and completely missed out on half of what was being said. Sorry guys. It won't happen again (I put it in now so you can see the tail end of what was being said).

Our goal was to raise $192 for Texas Children's Hospital to help fight pediatric cancer but have only raised $34 so far. If you weren't able to pledge during the marathon and would like to, donations are still being accepted until the end of the month so I'll leave the donate button in the Marathon Channel just in case. Who knows, maybe we'll make it to our goal over the next week!

We weren't the only ones putting on a marathon Saturday. It was a community effort and many different websites were all running marathons in one concerted effort. It has paid off big. So far, a total of $141,900 has been raised with many other sites running their marathon next Saturday. This has already crushed the last year total of $120,000. Congratulations to everyone that has pulled together in this event and we are blessed to have taken part of the biggest video game marathon ever.

So when is the next marathon for Ninfest? We are looking at the first weekend of March next year. Expect to see better production value, and a different cause and theme, and hope you'll all join us again. Now that we have all caught up on sleep, Ninfest will be back to its normal daily news posts.

Message from one of the anonymous donators:
It is great to see people gaming for a good cause. As the phrase goes, "Play on, player."