[dc]I[/dc] spent my weekend playing games for charity, and boy-oh-boy what a weekend. Extra Life is the charity in question, and it raises money for the Children’s Miracle Network. I took donations and played games for “24 hours” in the name of charity (specifically the Sparrow Children’s Center here in Lansing).
For more information about Extra Life, here’s my original blog post about the charity gaming marathon.
Since I reached my goal of $200, I played games wearing my Ghostbusters jumpsuit.
Playin’ games for charity makes me feel good!
You might think such a thing would be easy, but you try going to the bathroom in a flight suit and tell me how much fun you have.
ANYWAY
Extra Life says you don’t have to play games for 24 hours straight, but I managed 14 hours straight (12PM to 2AM) at the Gravity Works Design + Development offices in Old Town.
After 14 hours of games, I went home, got some sleep, showered, and went back for another three hours on Sunday morning/afternoon (10AM to 1PM). I played some games at home this weekend too, so I have about six hours of gaming left, which I will knock out soon.
A few members of the Gravity Works team managed to do 24 hours straight, and congrats to them. I just know my doing such a thing wouldn’t be pretty by the end.
What games did I play for Extra Life? Mostly, a lot of Magic: The Gathering.
Playing my Khans of Tarkir draft deck.
I played:
- Many games of the Magic variant called Commander.
- A Magic draft with packs from Khans of Tarkir.¹
- A Magic draft with packs from Battle for Zendikar.
- Magic “Pack Wars” using packs from Battle for Zendikar.²
Pack Wars using Battle for Zendikar.
- Super Mario Maker on WiiU.
- Snake Rattle and Roll, the Nintendo version on Xbox.
- Battletoads, the Nintendo version and the arcade version on Xbox.
- Gang Beasts.
I raised $250 for charity, and the entire Gravity Works team raised almost $2000 combined!
A favorite moment came while I played Battletoads. Someone said, “Is the guy playing Battletoads being punished?”
A fair question. Battletoads for Nintendo is infamously difficult. But, I am happy to suffer in the name of charity.
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¹ To “draft” I open a booster pack of cards (each player gets three), choose a card and pass it to the left. The next round, I pass to the right. This goes on until all the cards are selected. Then I made a deck using the cards I chose.
² To play Pack Wars, I get three copies of each basic land (15 land total), open a booster pack without looking at my cards, remove the bottom token card, and shuffle my land into the rest of the pack’s cards. This is now my deck, and I don’t know what any of my cards are. I really enjoyed this format.
