What is the Nightmarathon?

The last few posts I have mentioned our upcoming "Nightmarathon" and you may be wondering just what the heck is this Nightmarathon? Is it going to be fun? Should I be watching it, Georgia? Should I be counting the days? Really, what is it?

OKAY, I'LL TELL YOU.

Do you like video games? Do you like Halloween? Do you like horror? Do you like cool prizes? Do you hate cancer?

Four days. If anyone's counting, it's four days!

If you answered yes to all of the above, or even one of the above, then the Nightmarathon is for you!

The Nightmarathon is a charity event happening this weekend to benefit the American Cancer Society. You can read all about it here. And you can meet some of the members of the team in this podcast. It's a lot like traditional marathons, except instead of running or walking or whatnot, we'll be pledging to beat horror and Halloween themed video games.

That's right! We've taken all of the fun of a marathon and subtracted all of the drudgery of exercise!

The more donations the Nightmarathon receives for the American Cancer Society, the more video games we will have to beat. As games get unlocked, there are ways to donate to ensure the games get harder and more challenging. And sharing links to Nightmarathon, or having certain folks retweet links to Nightmarathon can unlock some achievements too, because ultimately we're trying to invite as many folks to donate to the cause as possible.

We may be taking a little trip to Raccoon City, even....

For example, "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" will be unlocked if folks can convince the lovely Felicia Day to retweet a link to Nightmarathon.net. Felicia Day is a heroine to many gamers, and she has nearly 2 million followers on Twitter. Even if a quarter of those folks gave just $1 to the American Cancer Society, a huge impact could be made.

And DID I MENTION WE HAVE PRIZES TO GIVE AWAY? They're some seriously sweet prizes too! We have sponsors like Valve, Arenanet, I-Mockery, Zombies & Toys, Another Castle, and World 8. There are video games to win, Portal 2 goodies, Guild Wars II art books signed by the entire dev team, rare plushies, and rad collectibles. Click here for the prize podcast and see some of the loot for yourself!

Here are some of the prizes!

A Portal flashlight....

Cool hats.

Guild Wars II art book, signed by the dev team,
including one member who will be signing it on the stream!

IT IS AN HONOR AND A PRIVILEGE TO TEMPORARILY HOUSE
THESE WONDERFUL TINY ANIMAL CROSSING CREATURES IN OUR HOME.

Pretend you work at Black Mesa with this ultra classy mug.

Monsters under the bed? Not a problem with this Guild Wars charrplush!

People will take one look at this shirt and go "NO WAY!"

Would you like to win a tiny speaking Sentry that makes me truly
uncomfortable? It could be yours on Sunday!

When the check comes, whip out your Counter Strike wallet
and show your date they're dealing with a bad ass!

Starting this Friday, October 26, at 11am we will be streaming this event 24 hours a day all weekend. Which means from October 26-28 you can go to www.nightmarathon.net and watch Ryan, myself, and our friends playing video games, giving away prizes, and generally being silly. Nathan Barnatt is going to make a special guest appearance on the stream! And viewers will be invited to join us in playing Left 4 Dead.We'll be in Halloween costumes, and invite folks to submit pictures of their costumes, pumpkins, and video game art on our Fan Art page.

Internet friends, have you ever wanted to see us in motion or hear our voices? DID YOU KNOW I HAVE A LISP? Find out for yourself this weekend! Keep us company during the day, awake during the night, and we promise to entertain. If anything tune in to see what happens when 10-15 people have to spend the entire weekend in a tiny apartment. THRILL TO THE CHALLENGE OF ONE BATHROOM!

My second Fan Art submission, Lilith and Morrigan from Darkstalkers.

Okay, so that's my fancy pitch, but you folks know me, so you many want to have a more "behind the scenes" scoop.

This all started a few months ago. Ryan's a big fan of the Mario Marathon and Desert Bus, both fantastic gaming marathons that have raised money for charities. He's also a big fan of Halloween and got to thinking about how much fun it would be to hold a horror themed gaming event in October. He put the two ideas together, a charity marathon of horror themed games, and went to our friends to see who would be interested in helping to make it happen. As it turns out, a lot of people were excited to use their gaming skills for a good cause, and the idea grew into a real event. Since then, we've all been working together to select games, contact sponsors, set up a website, test out recording equipment, and get everything ready for this weekend. We even have a friend flying in from the east coast on Friday!

The American Cancer Society felt like a natural choice when it came to picking a charity. We've both lost folks close to us to cancer, as have some of the people playing in the event. I imagine almost everyone knows someone who has been touched by this terrible disease. If we could play video games and stick it to cancer? Well, what's better than that?

So now that you know just what the Nightmarathon is, I hope you'll tune in and spread the word! If anyone has any questions on how to watch, donate, or where to go, please email me at pseudooctopus@gmail.com and I will be happy to walk you through it! One of the more entertaining results of planning this event has been explaining what a stream is to some of our family members :) If you don't know what a stream is, it's like a free tv channel online! Basically, if you have a computer that can handle moving footage and you go to www.nightmarathon.com at 11am Pacific Time (2pm Eastern Time) on Friday, you will see us playing in the screen on the website! That's it! And you can watch it anywhere there's an Internet connection. It's great, you'll love it.

Please, please, go "like" Nightmarathon's Facebook page and follow our Twitter! We'll be sending out updates on those pages, and we need our numbers to look big and juicy in time for the weekend!

See you Friday, when you can tune into the Nightmarathon to find out if I ever found a 1980s sequin dress for my Halloween costume that hides my baby bump. I'll probably do another blog post before then, to update you as we get the apartment ready and I bake up a lot of snacks to keep our players fueled!