So if you have gone to any other Zelda sites in the last week, you may have heard about the Zelda Versus Marathon. What it is, essentially, is two groups of marathoners competing against each other to earn achievements they have created within the gaming series, and each achievement contains a point value. When time is called the team with the most points wins. We have avoided posting about this marathon for a few reasons.

For starters, a versus type marathon has amazing potential, but the way they have it set up it rather convoluted. You want to watch the feeds side by side? Too bad. I mean, this is a competitive marathon of two teams, is it not? They should then have the feeds side by side (see video feeds above) and be jarring a bit back and forth at each other. After all, this is a “competitive” marathon to raise money for Child’s Play. They have all but eliminated the competitive factor going in.

Secondly, they don’t even have a list of achievements anywhere to be found, so no one has any idea what they are actually trying to achieve. No one knows what the point values are, or when the achievements have been met outside of “completing a play through”. A far better concept and idea would be to have a 72 Hour marathon of two teams completing the most amount of Zelda games they can in that time span, with the team that completes the most being the winner. That way, it’s far easier for the viewers to keep track of what is going on, and to start taking sides with whatever team they prefer.

Lastly is simply making the feeds entertaining – this is where allowing the two teams to talk to each other (which is easily achievable through free services such as Skype) adds a greater entertainment value. Have you ever seen someone playing on Xbox Live talking crap to each other? Ever watched the game competitions on TV and notice the trash talking trying to get inside each others head? That’s just amazing entertainment value. This versus series seems to be missing that.

All that being said, I posted about it for a couple reasons. First off, it is for charity, so even if it is poorly executed it is still a worthy cause to donate too. Secondly is to give those marathoners, and future people who may consider the same idea, a few pointers in terms of how to really capture an audience. Also as a pro tip, having one hot gamer chick involved in the action is guaranteed to increase viewers by at least a 1000. Gamers like to watch beautiful people playing the same games they do. It’s just a fact of life.

In either case, here is the donate button. Just remember folks that there are A LOT of gaming marathons being ran all year round, especially for Zelda. Just make sure if you’re going to do one yourself, to do it right.

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