On Friday, the charity speedrunning stream hit one million dollars for US charity Prevent Cancer Foundation. Late on Saturday night, it hit two million dollars, and the crowd went wild.
Donations hit the US$2 mil mark during a thrilling Super Mario Odyssey speedrun. As the run time ticked towards three hours, Twitch chat began a $5 donation chain, and the donation counter began to explode.
The commentators were asking for money in all sorts of ways — “donate $5 if you love anime,” “if you think he’s slowing down… donate $5”, and describing certain donations in terms of what it could get them at McDonald’s. The speedrunner, Bayleef, wasn’t super keen on this last method, because after three solid hours of Mario — and being in the food-themed Lunch Kingdom at the time — he was probably very hungry.
It ended up being a race against the speedrunner: reach US$2 million before Bayleef gets to the Darker Side of the Moon, a particularly difficult post-game level in Super Mario Odyssey that would mark the end of his run.
The audience chanted “Let’s go Twitch chat” as the donations climbed towards US$2 million, and they began to count down every thousand dollars as the total rose.
Bayleef hit 500 moons — his goal in the run — just after the donations hit two million in a wonderful moment of synergy. AGDQ might have its share of controversy, but moments like this are what it’s really about.
Bayleef’s run ended at 3:21:12.9, and watching him bounce around The Darker Side of the Moon is almost as satisfying as hitting the US$2 million mark.
AGDQ ended, as is traditional, with a Super Metroid run. There is always a donation incentive with Super Metroid: Save or Kill The Animals. This year, it was Save The Animals, so they can rest easy for another 6 months until Summer Games Done Quick.
The final total for AGDQ 2019 was $3,395,553, surpassing last year’s total by over $138,504.
Comments
5 responses to “Awesome Games Done Quick Ends With $2.3 Million Raised For Charity”
Kill the animals won… The animals are dead till Super Metroid gets run again.
please suffix the dollar amount with the currency like AUD so it gets less confusing 🙂
Especially if you’re going to mix currencies in the single post.
Wow, the localisation filter makes this a very confusing read when you look at the monetary values compared with the title and video.
That’s not actually the tradition. The tradition is generally that Super Metroid is the second last run and then they end with an RPG. Last year they didn’t have Super Metroid in AGDQ at all. I have a feeling that this year was different because they had a 9 and a half hour run of FF 9 and it would have meant the last day would have been mostly taken up by that if they ended with it.
Plus FF4 Free Enterprise a couple of runs before FF9 too. A lot of FF in the last day of this years marathon
Please refer to my username – whatareyoutalkinabeet… The figure is 2.3 million USD, but I cant tell if you’re trying to actively convert to AUD or just getting 2 and 3 mil mixed up (I mean it’s a fair bit of a difference right?)
Kotaku AU has an automated conversion filter that converts currency to $AUD. Unfortunately, in an article like this one, it makes a bit of a mess.
I watched the entire 9-and-a-half hour run of Final Fantasy IX and it was well worth it. Bring on SGDQ!