It's time to emerge from my doomsday bunker to admit to myself, well, I guess the December 21st apocalypse never quite happened. I'm all for a change of pace from eating canned beans and reading old magazines by candlelight in my cellar.

So, why not celebrate the new year and the fact that we're all still alive with a Marathon?

The title probably gave it away, but we'll be broadcasting Pokethon 3 (Pok3thon?) over New Years, starting Saturday, December 29th at noon. Yes, that's just about a week away! Sorry for springing this on you guys on such short notice-- finals have been eating a load of our time. Just about a week ago, we weren't slated to have any fundraiser but thanks to a couple dozen cups of coffee and a load of help and feedback from the folks in the IRC chat, we've now found just the way for you guys to celebrate New Years. A special thanks goes out to EdTheNerd for sending over a huge box of supplies and games and Jyn for working on the banner on such short notice (again).

So, what makes this Pokethon different than the last one? For starters... we can now legally drink.

We've got three screens!

Yes, 50% more screens means 50% more fun/accidental resets.

Plus, we can play each version of Pokemon at once-- pretty neat given that they're all a little bit different somehow. Case in point...

(Kelar is my favorite Pokemon. Anyway, that's Pokemon Green, Red and Yellow side to side. Neat, eh?)

Don't worry, the bootlegs will be making a full reappearance here. I've got at least one for every generation on the Game Boy. Should be an interesting comparison.

We'll play the DS games!

Gone are the days of the Rulercam! We've our hands on two DS capture devices so we'll be throwing a few DS games into the mix. I can't confirm that they'll be races (will need to keep testing to see if two will work at once), but they'll definitely make an appearance.

And, a couple other notes of interest...

ExtraLives.org has raised nearly $100,000!

As of this posting, the site has raised a grand total of $91,837.25-- let's try and ring in the new year right and bring this to $100,000!

We've got photos of OUR schoolhouses!

No more posting up photos of other schoolhouses in the village and saying, "well, ours probably looks like that. Maybe?" We've now got honest-to-god photos of the schoolhouses you guys helped fund! Go and check out the galleries! Let's try for a seventh!

So, again, starting Saturday, December 29th at noon, stop back here and check out the event! Given that everything came together on such short notice, any amount of help you could lend us in getting the word out would be EXTREMELY appreciated. Let's build a school! Let's bring the grand total to $100k! Let's play some Pokemon!