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"As Cool and Blue as Me"
Tim Troppoli, Site Administrator
August 25, 2010

At the end of Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic the Hedgehog has a line of dialogue to the effect of "Let's go home to the planet as cool and blue as me!" While it might seem pretty cheesy (then again, most of Sonic's lines are), it really does tie into what we've accomplished with our most recent Marathon. With all of your support, we've managed to raise enough money to build a well in Ethiopia, spreading access to clean water to those who never had it before!

The Rise and Fall of Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon had us playing some of the best and the worst Sonic games ever made for about 77 hours (or about 73 hours if you discount the time we spent working out technical issues). During this time, 32,714 of you tuned in for a total of 25,220 hours spent watching the Marathon (that's nearly 2 years and 317 days!)

Thanks to everyone who donated-- we nearly doubled our initial $3,500 goal, raising $6,608 for charity: water, allowing us to fund the construction of a well! The remainder of the money will contribute to providing water aid to those in dire need. I've noticed that this total has been increasing since the Marathon ended so thanks for your continued generosity!

Also, we wouldn't have been nearly as successful without everyone's help advertising the Marathon. Special thanks go out to everyone who spread the word (and upvoted the postings) on Reddit as well as GameMarathons.com, Sega Nerds, Emerald Coast, Sonic Wrecks and everyone else who spread the word via various social networking sites and on various forums. As is the case with all of our Marathons, we can play video games for as long as we rely on the viewers to make them truly a success.

We received quite a bit of fanart for this Marathon. Most of it has been uploaded and is viewable here. There were also a few poems and songs that were submitted which will be added to the album eventually. A big thanks goes out to everyone who made us something-- we really enjoyed looking through the artwork and felt it added a whole lot to the Marathon! The winners of the fanart raffle contest are Aaron B and KitteyDrake. Winners were chosen at random but be sure to check our the rest of the album for lots of great artwork!

I've emailed all of the raffle winners but I'd just like to congratulate John N., Brian C., Chris M., Alex G., and Ali A. for winning ExtraLives.org T-shirts and Nina H. and Patrik W. for winning the Sonic the Hedgehog hats.

Also, Kwando1313 is working on compiling the list of songs sung during the Sonic Marathon. Although it's still a work in progress, give it a look here. We sang (read: butchered) a lot of old classics from "Sonic Boom" to "Toot Toot Sonic Warrior" to "Live and Learn" so it's great to know everything has been recorded and will be broken up into individual tracks.

Sorry for the delay in finishing the list of donors from the Pokemon Marathon 2-- I'm finishing that up and it shouldn't be much longer until the list is uploaded. The list of donors from this most recent Marathon won't go up until all the other donor pages are taken care of.

Thanks again for tuning in and watching the Rise and Fall of Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon! We couldn't have done it without everyone's help and continued support!

Seeing as ExtraLives.org was created when we were all in high school, it was unavoidable that we'd all be heading off to college. By the end of this week, everyone involved with the Marathons will be back in school. College poses a few challenges with regards to the Marathons-- right now I'm not sure when the next Marathon will be, who will be there to staff it or if there will be any Minithons in between now and then. Keep checking ExtraLives.org for updates as well as becoming a fan of our Facebook page (maybe you can be lucky fan #1000?), the Twitter account, the ExtraLives.org forums (which I check daily, by the way) or the Steam Group.

Here's hoping the next Marathon isn't too far off and we hope to see you all there!

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Banner Contest Winner!
Tim Troppoli, Site Administrator
August 16, 2010

We posted up all the banners you guys made for our Rise and Fall of Sonic Marathon (starting this Friday at noon, Eastern Time!). Over 300 votes were cast and we've got ourselves some winners!

With 137 votes and 41% of the total, Jyn's banner (shown below) came in first in the contest, winning him 5 entries in the prize raffle!

Second place goes to Sean, whose banner received 100 votes (30% of the total). His banner is below and won him 3 entries in the raffle:

Hinkles' banner came in third place with 10% of the total and 35 votes-- just one vote ahead of the 4th place banner! This wins him a single entry in the raffle.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted a banner! Don't forget to tune into the Marathon which starts this Friday at noon!

Also, I apologize for the general lack of updates-- I've been extremely behind on things lately and haven't gotten a chance to change everything that needs changing. I promise that I'll update everything desperately in need of updating will be... well, updated. That goes for putting up the Pokethon's donor lists to making the page for the Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon.

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Marathon Poll Results!
Tim Troppoli, Site Administrator
July 25, 2010

I put a poll up two weeks ago asking you guys which Marathon you'd like to see next. Your choices were a revisiting of last year's Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon or a Banjo-Kazooie Marathon. More than 400 votes were cast and, despite the polls remaining neck and neck for much of the polling period, there's a clear winner. And that is...

...revisiting the Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon! With 219 votes, it captured 52% of the total, making it your choice for our next Marathon! Thanks for voting!

This isn't to say we'll never do a Banjo Marathon-- it's certainly still a very real possibility. However, the idea may also be integrated into a larger "Rare-a-thon" featuring other games made by Rare to provide a little more variety. Who knows!

I'm working on planning the Marathon now, including finalizing the list of games and putting up a banner contest. This should all be up sometime this week-- keep checking back for updates!

Two quick notes:

If you sent me an email during (or immediately following) the Pokemon Marathon, I likely haven't responded to it yet. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you! I've just been extremely preoccupied lately and haven't gotten around to reading and responding to all of my emails.
I sent out thank-you emails to all of the donors a while ago. However, some sort of error occurred while they were being sent out and I'm not sure if each email went through. If you donated and haven't received an email, please let me know via email. I don't want to forget anybody!

One last thing-- I'm experimenting with a pseudo-commenting system where people can leave feedback regarding main site updates on the forums. Registration isn't required! We'd love to hear what you guys think about the site announcements so please consider leaving a comment or two below.

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A Year of ExtraLives.org!
Tim Troppoli, Site Administrator
July 11, 2010

I remember drawing out both the site layout for ExtraLives.org and the video capture setup on a piece of looseleaf notebook paper over a year ago. At that time, I had no idea what would ultimately happen to the idea. Would the site ever go online? If so, would anyone ever watch our Marathons?

Half a dozen Marathons later, we have our answer. Throughout this past year we've raised $37,023.21, spent hundreds of hours playing video games and amassed hundreds of thousands of viewers. We've provided games, toys and books to children's hospitals through Child's Play, provided meals for hundreds, if not thousands, through the World Food Programme and worked to improve life for people in developing nations through UNICEF. Most recently, we've funded the construction of three schoolhouses through Free the Children in Ecuador, Kenya and most recently, Sierra Leone.

This most recent Marathon was a revisiting of our first Marathon in order to celebrate the first anniversary of ExtraLives.org. It lasted about 78 hours. More than 87,000 of you from over 110 countries tuned in to watch us play with the total time spent watching equal to 2069 days, 6 hours and 29 minutes-- that's more than five and a half years!

We raised $10,072.01 through this Marathon for Free the Children. The charity is able to build a schoolhouse with $8,500. Having surpassed that goal, we put up a poll and let you guys decide where you'd like to see the schoolhouse built and Sierra Leone won by a landslide. Not only will we build a schoolhouse there but we will also provide it with books, supplies and a school lunch program.

What makes this Marathon unique is the absolutely massive amount of fanart you guys sent to us. So far, I've uploaded it all to a Flickr album which has nearly 150 pictures (and I've recently found a handful of other pictures that were sent to a different email address so I should be putting up a few more soon). Thanks a lot for all of the fanart, guys! It really made the Marathon enjoyable for everybody involved. Plus, I don't think I'll ever forget such gems as Carla the Gyarados, Yugel the Kadabra, GHOST (the gasstation Pokemon), Volcano Bakemeat or any of the multitude of other jokes you guys helped to create during the Marathon.

I'd also like to give a special thanks to the people behind the pseudo-band Rock Tunnel for making us our first ever fan-song. It's entitled Bootknives of Satan and you can listen to it here. Just be sure to have the lyrics up-- you'll need them!

Speaking of songs, if you missed my rendition of Trololo at the end, it's been uploaded on YouTube for your "enjoyment." Give it a listen here.

As always, we really need to thank everyone who spread the word for allowing us to be so successful. Special thanks go out to the fine folks at Reddit for upvoting every post about us, NintendoLand for writing up a nice article about us and embedding the live Marathon feed, Marriland for also writing up a nice news article about us, Bulbapedia for featuring us in the news, Pokebip (which is a French site, oddly enough), GameMarathons.com and every other site that advertised the Marathon (sorry if we didn't include yours-- I can only look through site referral records and can't see if you linked directly to the Ustream page). I'd also like to thank everyone who posted it on various forums and social networking sites-- we couldn't have done it without you!

Also, congratulations to all of the raffle winners! All of the shirts and prizes have been awarded and the winners have all been emailed. If you didn't win, don't fret-- any unclaimed prizes will be raffled off again.

I will be emailing all of the donors shortly so I can put together the final list of donors-- don't worry, I haven't forgotten to thank all of you for your generous donations!

Next on the agenda is planning the next Marathon. Before we all ship off to college in the fall, we'd like to have one more Marathon. This isn't to say that it's the last Marathon ever. However, I have no idea what will happen in college and for all I know it may be the last time the current ExtraLives.org team got together for a Marathon.

So, here's the idea. There are a few Marathon ideas floating around right now. However, given the time we'll need to prepare we've got to limit them down to games that we not only know well but also games that we own. Here are our two best ideas:

Revisiting the Sonic the Hedgehog Marathon. Yes, we did a Sonic Marathon in July of 2009. However, I always had feelings that it could have been improved with more games and the splitscreen format (after all, Sonic is about speed-- why wasn't there racing involved?). This would be the easiest Marathon for us to pull off but we just revisited a Marathon this month and I'm not sure if people would rather us not do it twice in a row.

A Banjo-Kazooie Marathon. It'd include Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, Banjo Pilot, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Diddy Kong Racing (but you can only play as Banjo!). I think the length would be fine and that it'd be nice to dip a toe into a new game series but I'm not sure if this sort of Marathon would have a lot mass appeal or if it would be attractive to a more niche audience.

I've put a poll up to see what you guys think. If you have any comments on the choices or would like to suggest something else (remember, if we don't have the games, chances are we won't be able to do a Marathon with them next month), email me at Tim@ExtraLives.org.

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We appreciate everybody's continued support. Thanks for helping to make a dream come true by causing ExtraLives.org to be so successful! We hope to see you at the August Marathon... whatever that is!

(Also, thanks to Kwando1313 for letting me steal his forum avatar to replace the placeholder image-- it really highlights some of the best parts of the Pokethon).