This month ACT Today will be reentering the Pepsi Refresh contest in the $50,000 category. We no longer need to place in the top 2 for ACT Today to win, the top 10 will win $50,000. I was going through ideas of how we can make October a successful month for the contest.

EDIT: Last minute change of plans, Pepsi refresh didn’t accept ACT Today’s application,and also didn’t let us know until yesterday, so instead we will be raising money for them instead. Sorry for the confusion.

I think that by us streaming (the local TSG members) it causes burnout amongst the viewers and it kind of lessens TSG’s appeal. To put it bluntly, you guys get tired of seeing our faces. I also don’t want to detract at all away from our Castlevania marathon. Tthe best way to counter this is to have you guys take over the reigns. The community can now step into the spotlight and show us ya moves! We will do our best to promote each daily stream whether it’s through twitter, facebook etc. We will have a dedicated page for the community streamers so that there’s a central meet up page. http://www.thespeedgamers.com/community-stream We would like for the streams to start anywhere between 5-7 central.  Of course, we will be kicking off  the month with Halo Reach Friday night (Oct 1) at 6pm central
The full schedule of the streamers after the break

Friday October 1st starting at 6pm central we will be streaming Halo Reach and playing with all of you guys! What’s cool about us streaming on October 1st is that it kicks off ACT Today’s first month in the $50,000 bracket of the Pepsi Refresh contest. They are dropping down from $250,000 to the $50,000 category to give themselves a better chance to win. In the $250,000 category, only the top 2 won the prize money, in the $50,000 category the top 10 win. With the Halo Reach community stream night we can help them get off to a good start for the month of October. We will offer some voting incentives during the stream to get us to stream Saturday night as well. Chase is already talking crap, so be sure to have your game faces ready.

We chose Halo Reach because of all the hype swirling around it right now and I would guess that it also has the biggest reach (see what I did there?) amongst our community, minus Pokemon. We will also use the streaming opportunity to promote our upcoming Castlevania marathon, Oct 29-31. We are going to try and promote this community event to outsiders of the TSG community so that we can help ensure a successful marathon at the end of the month. We are still working out the charity info, I hope to have that for you guys soon.

As far as game types, rules and all that jazz concerning Halo Reach, I’ll have Chase type up the details and I’ll post them here. Of course, you can catch all the action here on www.TheSpeedGamers.com

We appreciate everyone who was apart of our highly successful Prince of Persia/Assassin’s Creed marathon for the Gulf Restoration Network. Whether it was donating, promoting or sitting back and enjoying the show, you guys make what we do unbelievable.  Although we did not quiet reach our goal,  the over $10,500 is nothing to scoff at. That is over $3,000 more than what we raised last year at this same time.  Our community continues to grow at a rapid pace. Its awesome getting to chat with all of you guys during what seems like gaming festivals about every other month.

Next up is the Castlevania series over Halloween weekend. We are going to be teaming up with another charity, RockingHRanch to  raise money for a great cause.  I’m going to wait for the exact details before I spill the beans, so keep checking back for more details.  For those of you that don’t know, the Rocking Ranch is where we gamed for our last marathon.  We want to thank the Hoover family for letting us use their property. We all had a great time.

Getting back to our speed gaming roots is a request that we hear ever so often. It is tough for us to master each game series we do when we are constantly playing new franchises and having to juggle work, school and family life. Within the events a lot of the runs shine but are sometimes washed out by games that, for example, a runner had to drop out of playing and we needed a last minute replacement. We’ve had huge feats such as catching all of the Pokemon in 72 hours (which some thought was impossible) and too many runs to name that were stellar.  It would be too easy for us to pick out world class runners that have offered up their services , but we want to stay within our community and most importantly within the core TSG team. We know that the fans and community of TSG don’t want to see the same series’s over and over, so its a tough balance. Repeat the same series’s year after year and have high quality runs, or sacrifice the quality of the runs with more diversity of the games we play. I think in 2011 you will see many series that we will impress you with and a lot of familiar faces. The same goes for our next series, Castlevania.  Expect a lot of quality runs.

August 20-23 we will be gaming for the Gulf Restoration Network during our Assassin’s Creed/PoP marathon.

“The Gulf Restoration Network is committed to uniting and empowering people to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf Region for future generations.”

For more information check out their website, http://healthygulf.org.

Originally we were going to be gaming for bestfriends.org but they have requested us to move them to the Kingdom Hearts marathon due to the violent nature of Assassin’s Creed. We completely understand and look forward to putting on a great show for bestfriends in December.

In a matter of 3 days our community was able to go from 10,000th place to 88th and win $20,000 for ACT Today in the Chase Community Giving contest.  We are proud to have such a caring and dedicated community that was able to rally together in such a short span of time. To date the TSG community has raised nearly $225,000 for various causes.  We’ve spanned lupus, cancer, autism, diabetes, the environment and now have our sights set on a new cause starting August 20th @6pm cst for our Assassin’s Creed/Prince of Persia marathon.

Thank you from our entire team!

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the Mario Marathon was by far my favorite marathon. It’s bitter sweet that it’s all over. Bitter to say good bye to all of my friends and the fun we had, sweet that we raised nearly $60,000 for ACT Today and I can now rest. There’s no way we could have done this without all of you; Donators, promoters and viewers.

A humongous thanks goes out to Fangamer.net. What they did for our marathon and ACT Today was phenomenal. Nearly $10,000 was raised through their T-shirts, AMAZING.

I’m currently working on a commemorative video that will be posted late tomorrow and Tuesday at the lastest.

Thanks again,

Britt

It’s almost here folks,  June 11th-18 starting at 6pm cst , our week long Mario marathon for ACT Today (Autism Care and Treatment).
We will be playing nearly 40 Mario titles live here on our website, www.TheSpeedGamers.com
The gameplay will be streamed with video commentary as well as chatroom so that viewers can interact with us and  each other.

Here’s video of a local news report on us to help give better insight on what exactly we do:

Donkey Kong champ Steve Wiebe will be participating in the marathon. As soon as we get appearance times, we will post them here.

Fangamer is once again supporting our cause with their upcoming shirt design “Pipe Vault”. During our Mother marathon for Susan G Komen, $1,800 was raised through their “Smaaaash” shirts.

Want to know what games will be played and when? We’ve made a detailed schedule that the viewers can follow. We will have to stick to our schedule closely.  If a game is not finished at the time it’s scheduled to end, we will  move on to whatever is scheduled. However, each night from Midnight-6am cst is “catchup time”. We will use this time to catch up on any games we did not finish and if we are all caught up you will see games like Mario Kart, Mario Party,Smash Brothers and other party games.

V.2 of the Mario Marathon schedule after the break! Minor changes are subject to change.

Whew, I’m beat!

What an awesome marathon. You guys pushed us over our goal raising,to this point,  $10, 675 in just 48 hours, FANTASTIC. If you would like to continue to chat with other community members and SpeedGamers, be sure to sign up to the forums, http://community.thespeedgamers.com/

A big thanks to Fangamer. Over $1,800 of the donation amount was from their shirt sales. Also, thank you ProtonJon and ChuggaaConroy once again for letting us share their fans for our events and also their time. Last, but not least, thanks to Good old Games and everyone else who sent in prizes to give away during the marathon. We never would have met our goal without your help.

Now we look forward to our week long Mario Marathon, June 11-18th for ACT Today. It promises to be a great one with the likes of Steve Wiebe, ChuggaaConroy and Kari “Essentia Johnson” all set to play in the marathon.

For a full game list and more details, check back tomorrow!

Details regarding the 48 hour hour plus Mother Marathon that starts on May 7th at 6 pm cst:
We,TheSpeedGamers, are based in the DFW Texas area and play video games to raise money for different causes. We have been a group for over two years now and have raised approximately $137,000 for various causes.
We broadcast ourselves over the internet  playing video game franchise’s to their completion while also providing video commentary. There is a chat room that accompanies the video game feed so that the viewers can interact with the players and other viewers. Everything can be viewed on TheSpeedGamers.com.  During the Mother marathon we will be raising money for Susan G Komen.
Donations will be gathered using a chip in widget; debit, credit cards and paypal can be used to donate.

Video example from our Final Fantasy Marathon:

Game list and order:

* Mother 1 (NES): Phil
* Mother 2/Earthbound (SNES): ChuggaaConroy
* Mother 3 (GBA) Rob, Britt, Cameron

Additional info:
- Our goal will be $10,000. If we reach $20,000 a sponsor has said that they will ad an additional $1,000.
- Fangamer will be donating the proceeds of their new T-shirt shirt design to Susan G Komen. The specific design will be unveiled by the start of the marathon.

Prizes:
Hand done drawings (Mother related) by Anatotitan
3 codes redeemable for free games on gog.com  *donated by Good Old Games*
Mother 1+2 (GBA) *Brand New*
Mother 3 Handbook
Franklin badge Key chain
Eb Yourself Gold T-shirt (XL)
Mother Pin x2
Giygas Sticker x3
Pk Yomega

For the commentary schedule and more video, click read more.