What Can We Learn From Mario Marathon?

3 guys, 1 Room. 7 Mario games. Mario Marathon.

These guys are working their way through every console Mario game and attempting to collect every star on every level. At this moment in time they’re 66 hours in and doing pretty well. They’ve raised over $22k so far. If you’ve never played any of the Mario games you’ll have no idea the enormity of the quest they’ve committed too.

Last night they had the 2nd most trending topic on Twitter, but that seems to have died down now unfortunately. But you can help to get it back up there by tweeting with the hashtag #mariomarathon – plus if you tweet with that hashtag you’ll be entered into a draw to win the contents of one of their “Mario Schwag ? Boxes”. Hooray.

The whole thing is being streamed live on ustream.tv. People who donate or tweet about it are getting shout-outs on the air. They’re mucking around. They’re having fun. A bit like Tim’s thing that I posted the other day. There’s something about this that just feels DIY and super-excellent.

Of course there’s examples of brands having done this kind of thing too. Diesel’s Heides campaign, and also the movieboy campaign for The Sun. But brands and agencies always seem to overcook it (just a bit), hell we’ve done it too. It’s only natural. We want it to look slick. To convey the values of the brand. To be laden with the clients’ lovely juicy messaging. We feel like we need to use ALL the social services. We overly worry about moderation and the list of mistakes goes on.

Mario Marathon is how the real world works. Stick it on a site. Use stuff that’s out there and away you go… FUN TIMES!

If you want to know how to put on a gaming marathon online, the Mario Marathon dudes have written a handy how-to. There’s loads of good advice in there. Seriously go check it out even if you’re not planning on running a gaming marathon this is chock full of online smarts…

My favourite piece is the table of costs.

$75 Video Capture Card
$50 Web Cam
$30 WebCamMax Software
$16 Cables, Adaptors, Splitters
$20 Universal Game Cable
$16 Desktop Microphones
$15 Web Domain Name

Gulp!

I donated some money last night and got a shout-out on the stream. It was nice. Have a look. Donate some cash.