Extra Life 2012 Recap

Thanks again to everyone who donated for this year's Extra Life Charity!

Seriously, I can't even begin to thank you enough. 100% of those donations are given to Phoenix Children's Hospital to help kids that really need it, so thank you.

Now this year's 24 hour game marathon was a little different. Last year I streamed it, this year I couldn't because my laptop was crushed on the way back from CGE so I had no camera to stream it. I started Friday night at midnight because, hey, that's technically Saturday. That and it's easier to stay up from midnight to midnight rather than, say, 3am to 3am, or some other ungodly early hours that would completely throw off my sleep schedule.
I started the night off with Monster Party on the NES. Now, I've already played this games and even covered it in my series. It's October so I thought it a fitting game to start with. Since it is tedious and you have to carefully inch your way through the levels, it's also an easy way to kill a couple of hours. I got a few levels in before I got a game over, then I did it again.

Next I played Super Wagyan Land 2 for the Super Famicom. I haven't covered this game, or set of games in my series yet but I do plan on it. This game's levels are way too short, but the "boss battles" take some time because they are very dialogue heavy and are entirely in Japanese. Luckily there's no kanji and I can still read hiragana and katakana well enough to sound out the words and sort of know what's going on. Of course, I couldn't translate it all, but it's easy to pick up. I'm pretty sure the games were made for kids in Japan so all of it's in elementary level Japanese. I'd go more into it, but if I did that here I wouldn't have much additional content for when it comes time to write about it for the video. I played it to the end before moving on.

Next I played Deja Vu, a point and click adventure game on the NES. It's just like Shadowgate except instead of being an adventurer in a castle, you're a detective with amnesia that needs to figure out who he is and why he was drugged and left in bathroom stall. Since I have an abundance of games to play through, I only played this one for a little bit. While I'm not sure how much "progress" I made, I was thoroughly entertained. I found a dead body, I punched a hooker, left the bar to drown in its own seemingly never ending supply of wine, blew up my car and died. Fell into a pit and died. Ventured into the sewer where I punched an alligator, it bit off my legs and I died again. Next time I went down there and found the alligator, I put on my sunglasses and shot him in the face. Bad ass.

Next up, Cacoma Knight on the Super Nintendo. You see the pattern here? I'm playing games that I've covered in my series! The ones I have physical copies of anyways. This game is not all that fun, and I don't really like it, but I hadn't played it at all since I made that video way back when and it's a great way to waste some time. I played it for a little bit. Didn't beat it this time around though, not that is matters, that game is boring and I didn't want to fall asleep before I'd even reached the half-way point of my marathon.

Speaking of having copies of the games that I've covered in my series, Daruma Dojo for the Super Famicom was next! This is by far one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, if not my favorite. I played this for a good couple of hours. I got to the last level and could not beat it. There's unlimited continues so I tried and I tried again, probably a dozen times or so before my finger slipped and I selected the option that wasn't continue. Well, sometimes it's better to just move on.

I wanted to take a break from retro games for a bit, so hooked up the 360 and played Child of Eden for a while. I played through all the levels a couple times and then played that challenge level a couple times to see how far I could get. I'm thinking I might still go back to it after the fact and play it some more one of these day when I find some leisure time.

Then I played Sega All Stars Racing where I proceeded to play through all of the cups on all difficulties. Not bad. It's still a fun game. I can't wait for All Stars Racing Transformed to come out next month!

Then there was Jet Set Radio Future which was the only game that I hadn't had the chance to play yet. I was super excited to finally check it out as Jet Set Radio is by far one of my favorite games of all time. I was more than impressed with the improvement of the controls and the fluidity of the graffiti this time around. Everything was so great, the colors, the soundtrack, the level of difficulty. I actually think I like this game more than the original, which can't be said for many games that I've played. I played for hours. Not that the game takes that long, I think I'm just not that good at it. It took me a while to grasp the timing of grinding on signs and not falling, but it was totally worth it once I got it down. I eventually decided to take a break from the game when getting further in the story required a fetch quest (for graffiti souls). So I ordered a pizza.

By this time in the day my boyfriend wanted the tv I was using back so I used another tv and was determined to beat Daruma Dojo. I must have spent a good 3 hours trying to beat the final level. Seriously. I don't remember it being this hard when I'd beaten it the first time I played. Of course, then I probably wasn't sleep deprived. After failing multiple times I decided to play Jet Set Radio Future some more.

In the last few hours of the marathon I decided to end it with some more retro games. I played a few games in the NES. First I tried my hand at Othello, which is just a computer version of the game Go. I was beat by the computer every single time. You know, for someone who's good at puzzle games, I'm terrible at strategy games. Next I played Super Mario bros all the way through, and then ended the marathon by playing Rad Racer. As I reached the finish line of level 3, so too did I reach the finishing line of Extra Life 2012.

That was it. It took me a while to get to sleep considering I'd been up for 40+ hours at that point, 24 of them playing video games. Seriously, I played more games yesterday than I probably did in the last 2 weeks combined. Thanks again to everyone that made it possible. Let's do it again next year!