Wow, has it already been a month since The Legend of Zelda Marathon ended? It certainly doesn't feel that way...

In any event, I've recently received some information from Free the Children regarding the $12,219.20  raised (again, I can't thank you guys enough for your support). As previously mentioned, the money will be put toward constructing and furnishing a school, filling it with books and supplies, funding teacher training programs and salaries and providing a school lunch program for hungry children for about two years.

Then again, that's all old information. I've got some new information regarding the school. First of all, it'll be built in Ecuador. I don't have a definite time for when construction will start, but I've been told that it'll take approximately ten months to build. We'll receive updates twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall) with pictures of the schoolhouse, information about the village we're supporting and stories about the direct beneficiaries of the project. Whenever I get this information, I'll post another update.

Although construction of our schoolhouse has not yet begun, I've received some pictures of some of Free the Children's past school building efforts in Ecuador. Consider them representative of what our schoolhouse may look like!




I'm actually quite impressed with the size and quality of the schoolhouse-- it looks well constructed and pretty comfortable inside. Good job, guys-- this is something we can all be proud of.


And what use would the school be without some children to go with it?

Agan, just a reminder-- this is not our school. Ours will be built in the coming months-- the photos are merely there to give a representation of what it will likely ultimately look like.

I've also enquired about the possibility of creating up a commemorative plaque to place in the school and am awaiting a response. We are unable to name the school-- that honor goes to the village in which the school is built.

Thanks again for making The Legend of Zelda Marathon a huge success! Keep checking back for more details regarding our next Marathon!

I remember looking at the Free the Children website in early November and noticed that they had constructed hundreds of schools for children in developing nations. While I was initially captivated by the idea of raising enough money to build a school, one simple fact grounded me back in reality-- they cost $8,500. Although our last Marathon raised a respectable $2,000 for UNICEF, that was still thousands away from funding a school.

Turns out we had nothing to worry about.

The initial goal for The Legend of Zelda Marathon was set at $2,000. Thanks to everyone's generosity and support, we not only met our goal but exceeded it by over $10,000, raising a total of $12,219.20 for Free the Children! That money will be put toward constructing a school in a developing nation, filling it with books and furniture, paying for teacher training programs and salaries and providing a school lunch program.

I'll update the site with as much information as I can regarding where the school is to be built and what it ultimately looks like whenever construction begins. I'm as eager to see what it looks like as you are!

We played through The Legend of Zelda series for nearly 81 hours straight. During this time, we received over 300,000 total viewers (313,298 to be exact). The total time everybody spent watching the broadcast was 2,656 days and 27 minutes-- that's more than seven years! Honestly, between the massive amount of money raised and the enormous number of viewers, this Marathon surpassed all of our wildest expectations.

Of course, we could not have been nearly this successful if it wasn't for all of you who watched, donated and spread the word. First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone over at Reddit who upvoted the posting about the Marathon, getting it not only to the top of the gaming page, but also letting it break through to the first page as well (here's a link to the AMA everyone requested). I'd also like to thank FriendCodes.com for advertising our Marathons since our very first broadcast. Additional thanks go out to The Sacred Realm, GameMarathons.com, Legend Zelda, Zelda Capital and all of you who advertised our Marathon on social networking sites and various forums. We couldn't have done it without you guys!

So, as you may remember, the Marathon was formatted as a race between two teams: Team Navi and Team Tatl (named after the fairies in the N64 Zelda games). Who won? Let's take a look...

Team Navi Completion Times: The Legend of Zelda: 5:13:34 Zelda II: N/A A Link to the Past: N/A Ocarina of Time: 10:31 Majora's Mask: 10:13

Team Tatl Completion Times: The Legend of Zelda: 5:13:48 Zelda II: 7:38:29 A Link to the Past: 9:47 Ocarina of Time: N/A Majora's Mask: N/A

Just a brief explanation of the table above-- the two-screened race was formatted so when one team beat the game, both teams would move on to the next one. We did not wait for both teams to complete the game. The "N/A" means that the team did not complete that particular game, as the other team had finished it first.

You may notice that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are conspicuously absent. There's a reason for that! About halfway through Wind Waker, we realized that there was no way we'd have the time to be able to complete both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. We made a poll and nearly everyone opted to switch over to Twilight Princess (where we'd have a mirrored race with one team on the GameCube and one team on the Wii). Well, disaster struck-- one of our televisions died. Due to this, we no longer had two screens and could not continue the racing format. I'll miss that television...

Anyway, to conclude, based on the five games the teams raced through to completion, Team Navi emerged victorious!

And of course, there was the case of the CDi raffle. In case you missed it, Mike Simons won the CDi and 18 games. Congratulations!

In the coming weeks, I will be updating the site with a few things, including:

• A complete list of donors (it's taking time to sort through over 760 people)! Done!
• A synopsis of the Marathon
• Renaming all of the Marathon recordings on Ustream and giving them all descriptions.

I just want to thank everyone again for making this fundraiser such a success and I hope to see you at our next Marathon!

(If you're looking for something to tide yourself over until the next Marathon, forum user Hinkles has been hard at work compiling all of the past Marathon recordings onto a YouTube page for your enjoyment!)