Not to get your hopes up…

… but JT Eberhart and I were chatting recently about the possibility of staging a 24hr classic video gaming marathon via UStream or similar, to raise funds for some good causes. The two of us, playing video games and shooting the shit about religion and skepticism and the various topics intersecting with for TWENTY FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT (minus food and bathroom breaks), all while soliciting your donations. We’d be splitting the proceeds between Camp Quest and sending students to Women In Secularism 2.

I don’t have a date, though we’re going to try for Hallowe’en-ish (or probably a weekend thereabouts).

I don’t have a list of games, though we do have a few good ideas, including TMNT: The Arcade Game, River City Ransom, Bubble Bobble, and Kirby Superstar – The Great Cave Offensive.

I have exactly one confirmed-lock guest for an hour of chat time, and three people I’d like to ask.

What do you folks think?

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Not to get your hopes up…
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15 thoughts on “Not to get your hopes up…

  1. 3

    If you’re talking about old school two-player games, then I think you’ve got to have ‘Contra’. One of the Double Dragons would also be cool, though you already have some good fighting games chosen. For something like this I prefer games that allow for friendly fire–makes for more interesting discussions. 😉

  2. 5

    Zinc: I didn’t say we’d be off-camera for either of those breaks, just that we wouldn’t be playing games!

    Contra and Double Dragon were both suggested, in both NES and SNES forms. Could you imagine Contra with friendly fire? It would be IMPOSSIBLE.

    Speaking of impossible, no Battletoads. Even with infinite lives, we could sink eight hours just trying to get past Rat Race or Clinger Winger. Damn twitchy levels.

  3. 6

    I’d donate to join you guys for part of it, especially if this was some MP game.

    Password Protected Team Fortress 2 MvM + Passworded Vent somewhere? Something along those lines.

  4. 7

    I recommend TwitchTV over UStream. (1) Twitch is set up specifically for streamathons of gaming sessions, and (2)UStream redacts what it deems to be curse words for viewers who type in the chat window, which ordinarily might or might not be objectionable, but one of the redacted words was “gay.” This proved problematic when we at Ask An Atheist were doing our fundraiser stream-a-thon for the Washington Marriage Equality campaign. We had no warning of this prior because full text appears to the person who types, and so we had no indication there would be anything so stupid.

  5. 9

    Jason Thibeault said:

    …no Battletoads. Even with infinite lives, we could sink eight hours just trying to get past Rat Race or Clinger Winger.

    I had successfully wiped all memory of that game from my conscious memory. Until reading that. I now have a rage headache coming on. I so freaking hate hate hate that damn game…

  6. 13

    Wow, the list of possible classic games is practically endless! I assume you’ll be using emulators so you can play almost any game?

    My suggestions:
    Zork (IBM clone)
    Castle (IBM clone)
    Space Quest (IBM clone)
    Eye Of The Beholder (PC)
    Populous (PC)
    Wing Commander (PC)
    X-Com: Enemy Unknown (PC)
    Utopia (Intellivision)
    Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Intellivision)
    Lady Bug (ColecoVision)
    Pepper II (ColecoVision)
    Defender (arcade)
    Pac-Man (arcade)
    Ghouls & Ghosts (arcade)
    Space Invaders (arcade)
    Burgertime (arcade)
    Joust (arcade)
    Zaxxon (arcade)
    Rampage (arcade)
    Xenophobe (arcade)
    Wonder Boy in Monster Land (arcade)
    WWF Superstars (arcade)
    Yars’ Revenge (Atari 2600)
    E.T. The Extraterrestrial (Atari 2600)

    That’s just off the top of my head, and I haven’t even hit the Famicon, Super Famicon, or Sega Mega Drive yet!

  7. 14

    Let’s try to restrict it to 2p simultaneous for this run. Much as I might enjoy livecasting Zork, we kind of want to entertain a broader fanbase. Plus involving two players is important because JT is like this whole other person or something.

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