Sitting a marathon.

I saw an interesting, if a bit depressing thing at my favorite Nintendo blog, GoNintendo. Some guys announced somewhere that they were going to beat four 3d Zelda games in a period of 48 hours. I've seen them play, and while it was an ok idea, it makes me wonder about my generation.


Anyway, marathon gaming. I've played tons of games in my life, but have I ever marathon gamed? Probably the closest I've done that is when I rented Chrono Trigger, where I played 23 hours in a 3 day rental period, but I'm starting to think that I exaggerated that feat.

I do sympathize with the idea of playing several similar games back to back. There were days where I would come home from school and decide to play all the Mega MAn games I had back to back. I don't recall if I was capable of doing that in one day, and I'm sure once I owned the fifth I had to use another day or so.

Another series I used to love playing through was the Tomb Raider series. Too bad the games kept getting increasingly bad. Once I owned the fourth one I think I stopped playing the series in order. I always collect the secrets for the middle two games but didn't bother with the first and fourth.

Still, while I wasted a lot of free time playing these games, I never played them in a marathon way. When they started having stories of Asian people dying from whatever straight hours of playing, I was a bit incredulous about the stories. EEven I can't play a game for more than 20 hours straight. My mom, when I was a younger game player, would force me to take a break every hour to stretch and focus my eyes elsewhere. But even after she stopped enforcing that, I still didn't have problems eating or sleeping. Maybe I would wait a long time before finally going to bed, and maybe all I ate was a bowl full of doritos, but I don't get how these guys can play themselves to death.

Still, I do have a webcam and a ustream account. And I'm always looking for ideas to steal so I have more blog material. So here's my idea of marathon things I could do.


I could beat the entire classic Mega Man series in 9 hours. Mega Man and Bass and the GBs don't count.

I could beat the entire Tomb Raider series (7 current console versions only) in a week.

I could beat every Final Fantasy from 1-10 in a month.

I could watch every episode of MST3k in 16 and a half days.

I could read every Discworld novel in a year. I don't need that much time, but I'm a slow reader in more ways than one.


This list will get bigger when I get more ideas.