24 hours, 15 games, and three very tired gamers later, the Lame Game Marathon has come to a close, and what a result!

Thanks to your donation efforts we have raised over five thousand dollars for the UNHCR. That’s enough to provide over 700 meals to refugee children, or over 100 therapeutic feeding kits, or over 55 survival kits, OR enough all weather tents to shelter over 10 families. Of course how the UNHCR uses the money is up to them but we can all be sure it will be to benefit the people of East Africa in whatever way they need it the most.

We all had an amazing time putting this event together, and we hope you all enjoyed watching the event from your phones or computers. While it was a lot of fun and games it was also a lot of hard work, work that went in to setting up the event and even more work that went into keeping the event running smoothly so the donations could keep rolling in.

So without further ado, let’s shine some light on the hard working people who toiled with us for the entire 24 hours to make this event happen, even though they didn’t have the luxury of holding a controller in their hands for the entire time.

The Producer - Luke (Dukey) Wigley
The hardware man, the software man, our go-to guy. Dukey has been kind enough to allow us to set up in his house for the event as well as offering his beastly PC to produce and stream the event live for you all to see. Dukey has been essential in making the tech side of the LGM run perfectly, and was without a doubt the glue holding the whole thing together. He was the one pushing the buttons during the broadcast to make sure all the footage streams properly, letting that the commentators know when they’re on the air, and, most of all, making sure we fit as many goat videos into the event as possible.

Lurked unseen during the broadcast, dwelling in the shadows, watching over the whole thing omnipotently and making sure everything is all right. He’s pretty much Batman.

The Presenters - Samuel Dillinger, Mick Camilleri, Leo Stevenson, Shane Sterry, Stephen (Kuda) Kuiter
Considering the horrific nature of the games we were going to be playing we knew that we would find ourselves dumbstruck in terror and confusion on more than one occasion. Thats where these guys came in, Sam, Mick, Leo, Shane and Kuda have been your friendly guides through the dark and seamy world of terrible videogames, filling your heads with useless videogame trivia and verbally documenting our every emotional breakdown and controller-breaking fit of rage. As well as commentating on our antics throughout the broadcast they were very active on the chat, our Facebook page and our Twitter feed with you all, fielding questions, baiting trolls, relaying messages and even (thanks to some of your donations) getting naked. It was definitely thanks to these guys that the stream somehow remained entertaining for the full 24 hours (well, perhaps most of the 24 hours anyway.)

While Leo, Shane and Kuda (who jumped in unannounced to lend an awesome helping hand) all did a fantastic job as the ‘men on the ground’ to keep you all informed as to what was going on inside our heads, an extra special thanks go to Mick and Sam who, very much like the spartans of old, hardened the eff up and presented non-stop for the entire 24 period. Even when fatigue and weary vocal chords began to wear at them, they powered on and kept talking to keep you all informed and entertained even in the wee hours of the morning.

A gargantuan effort was put in by the entire team and without their resilience and hard work, the Lame Game Marathon may not have happened at all let alone become the target-smashing success that we all got to be a part of. We didn’t accomplish it all on our own though, as many others contributed in many different ways and we owe them a huge thanks for the part they played in this great event.

Thanks go out to:
Justine and Em who provided food for us all and ran donation tally updates for the whole night (in fact anyone who stopped by to bring supplies and wish us well deserve a huge thanks)

IGN for posting news of the LGM leading up to the event, and for also providing a special lame game to play (sorry but our setup couldn’t play Rise of Nightmares)

Kotaku Australia and Destructoid for helping to spread the word about the event.

Yug at Mana Bar Melbourne for spreading the word about the event and even streaming the event live from the bar.

The developers who made all of these lame games for us to play (sorry to take the piss out of your games for 24 hours straight)

And a gigantic, humongous thank you to everyone who watched and donated. No matter how much or how little you donated (although some of you donated a lot, you’re extra awesome) you helped us to smash our $2000 target and help out East Africa and the UNHCR more than we could have ever imagined.

See you all next time ;)

Pimp My Ride

Platform: Xbox 360

Release Date: 5th December 2006

Developer responsible for this: Eutechnyx (?!??)

The Gist: Based off of the popular MTV series of the same name, Pimp My Ride is a driving/racing/car customization game where you take old crappy cars and turn them into pimped out rides. Set in Pimp Town (yes, Pimp Town), you can drive your ride around the town to perform various minigames including a dancing minigame where you can ghostride the whip

Why was it so bad? While PMR’s visuals are just acceptable, the core gameplay revolves around a series of boring minigames based around “pimping” your “rude” so to speak. The driving feels like being in a cardboard box being pulled along very quickly on a string while not caring if you collide with any other cardboard boxes because they will fly off into the air and there will be no other consequences. The actual ‘pimping’ options where you customize the car, which you would feel would be the main core of the game, are simply bare are just feel like very boring work. In fact, doing real life work on a car (or anything else for that matter) would be better than playing this game, at least that would give you some sense of accomplishment at the end of it all.

“There’s not much reason to buy Pimp My Ride unless you love Xzibit. And we mean love.” - IGN

“It’s just not fun to play” - Gamespot

GameRankings.com score: 38%

Carmageddon 64

Platform: Nintendo 64

Release Date: 25th July 2000

Developer responsible for this: Titus

The Gist: For those who have never heard of the PC game Carmageddon the premise is simple. Hop in a ridiculous modified car, race in an open environment and try to win by crossing the finish line first or by destroying all of your opponents. The game’s main drawcard was the feature of adding extra time to the clock by running over the innocent pedestrians that were unfortunate enough to be on the street the same time that you are. The game was violent, bloody and hilarious.

And then Superman 64 developers Titus were tasked with porting it to the Nintendo 64, you can imagine what came next.

Why was it so bad? Carmageddon 64 is a shambles of a game. Possibly one of the ugliest games on the N64, the game had terrible models and textures so blurry that using NO textures at all would have been a major improvement (and let’s not forget the developers obsession with what appears to be Comic Sans). But it is not simply the game’s looks that earned it a place in our marathon, the game suffers from terrible framerate drops and slowdowns (a bizarre problem considering how simple and boring the game’s models are), and the cars are impossible to control. When you have a racing game with uncontrollable cars, you know that something is very, very wrong. How this game was even put on store shelves and sold for 90 dollars is a question that videogame enthusiasts have been asking themselves for years, and once you see it in action, you’ll be asking that question too.

“There is now actually a game on the market that’s impressively worst than Superman 64” - IGN

“The game has absolutely nothing going for it” - Gamespot

GameRankings.com score: 28.5%