UPickVG IV Player Shift Schedule

You are super hyped for UPickVG IV, the upcoming 48-hour-long video game marathon where you get to pick the games that are played. You’ve requested games that you want to see, you’ve been voting on all those requested games to solidify their inclusion, and you’re shoving gobs of money into a special savings account just to donate as much as possible to make ______ play that game!

But wait a second… what about that ______ in the last sentence? Just who is gonna play these darn games in the name of charity, anyway?

We’re glad you asked! And in response, we’re proud to announce the Player 1 Shift Schedule for UPickVG IV:

Friday, June 12th
8pm – Midnight	Grant
Saturday, June 13th
Midnight – 4am	Chloe
4am – 8am	Sarah
8am – Noon	Chip
Noon – 4pm	Stephonee
4pm – 8pm	Tracy
8pm – Midnight	DebbStep*
Sunday, June 14th
Midnight – 4am	Grant
4am – 8am	Sarah
8am – Noon	Jimmy
Noon – 4pm	NightHawk
4pm – 8pm	Greg

All times above are Eastern Daylight Time. Clicking on a time will show you that time in your local timezone. Clicking on the name of a Player will take you to their bio.

*This shift previously belonged to JohnnyVengeance, who will unfortunately no longer be able to make it to UPickVG IV. The good news is that the illustrious DebbStep will be taking over his shift!

So start planning your donations for the games you want all these cool cats to play, and tune in Friday, June 12th to see what happens to us:

Stephonee

GrantGrant

Chip Chasterson

Super Chloe

Sarah

Jimmy

Tracy

NightHawk

Greg

DebbStep

What Video Games Will We Play? VOTE NOW!

UPickVG IV, the 4th U-Pick Video Game Marathon for Charity, is coming June 12th! And we want to know – just what games are you going to subject us to this time?

Your vote below will help determine which games are available to donate for in our 48-hour long marathon. You have until the end of the day on May 15th to get your votes in! You can vote for multiple games at once (pick all the ones you like!) and you can vote once per day, so…

Vote early, vote often! (Until May 15th!)

(Can’t see the poll below? Click here!)

Tips: (Yes, we’re going to tell you how to rig the poll for a game you want!)

The games appear in random order every time the poll loads, so as to not give favor to the games that happen to be at the top. If you’re looking for a specific game, use “Ctrl+F” to search for the game’s name.
Don’t see the name of a game above that you wanted? Use that “Other” box to do a write-in vote, son!
Best way to get a game you want to do well in the poll? Vote every day, and harass your friends and family to vote for that specific game, too. Remember to be specific when you harass people – a Facebook post of just the link to this blog post won’t get Aunt Edna to vote for Dark Souls – you gotta tell her what game to vote for.
Share the poll on all your social media networks. It’s for charity, and voting is cool.
Tips #3 and #4 go double if you’re doing a write-in vote for something that’s not in the poll. You’ll have to work extra hard to convince friends, family, and your social networks to come back often and write in the name of the game you want. (And next time, don’t be slow, and request games before we do the poll.)

Interview on Slashdot Video

Want to learn more about what we do here at the U-Pick Video Game Marathon for Charity, and how we do it? We recently sat down to answer some questions from Slashdot (/.)’s timothy about what we do, and how it all happens.

And the article was featured on Slashdot’s front page, so… that’s awesome! Right under the Apple Watch.

Check out the two-part interview on Slashdot’s site to see Grant and me (Stephonee) explain it all, with volunteers Chloe and Tracy on hand in the background for moral support (or just for giggling).

Still got questions about what UPickVG IV is, and how it will work? Hit us up with a comment here!

Butt Heroes. Dual Butts? Butts. [Grant Reviews the N64 Game “Dual Heroes”]

[Editor’s Note: Grant wanted to write a review of an N64 game, “Dual Heroes,” and we let him. We apologize profusely for the following “review.”]

We played Dual Heroes. I don’t think I learned anything about this terrible game. Let’s have a butt contest instead:

: Red Power Ranger. Quality butt. Awesome sword distracts from butt. 7/10

: Kitty MeowMeow Khajiit. Not sure how this Bloody Roar character made it into another game. Nice shiny butt is hidden under his tail. 5/10

: Kakashi. Ninja butt is so dark that you can’t oogle it. 2/10

: Ice Man. Weird blue butt is not impressive, but his calf muscles look like butts. 9/10 for having three butts.

: Sexbot 9000. Are those butt-high boots? That must be uncomfortable, even for a robot. I feel her pain. 1/10 for sympathy pains.

: Danceotron. Sweet helmet. Too bad she isn’t in a helmet contest. 0/10

: Captain No Butt. Does this guy even have a butt? Dr. Metal Diaper gets 0/10

: Green Power Ranger. Didn’t skip leg day. Can probably summon the Dragonzord. Is king of butts. Look at it. LOOK AT IT. 45/10

Dat butt

It’s watching you.

UPickVG IV – June 12th-14th 2015

It’s coming, it’s coming, IT’S COMING! The 4th U-Pick Video Game Marathon for Charity (“UPickVG IV” for short) will be broadcast live on the interwebs June 12th-14th, 2015.

Donate now to pick the games!

During the 48-hour-long continuous livestream, we’ll play the video games you pick to raise money for charity: water, to bring clean water access to people who need it in rural Uganda.

All hail the Wheel of Destiny! Photo by Steve Petrucelli

Starting the evening of June 12th and going for the next 48 straight hours, we’ll play the games you choose when you make a donation to our charity fundraiser. We’ll switch games each hour (on the hour), as determined by the Wheel of Destiny that we spin – a wheel of all the top games that have received donations.

Got ideas for what games should be on the list? GOOD. You can request games for UPickVG IV right now on our Request Games page. The sky’s the limit: name any game you can think of that you would pay money (to charity) to see played!

We’ll be taking suggestions for UPickVG IV on the Request Games page up until May 1st. At that point, the “Voting Period” begins, and we’ll throw everything that’s been suggested into a big ol’ internet poll – and you’ll be able to vote for your favorites! (Don’t worry, you’ll be able to vote for more than one game, and we’ll let you vote more than once, too.)

Once the votes are in, we’ll put together the ultimate list of video games available for UPickVG IV – and we’ll open the donation floodgates so that you can get the games of your choice up on that Wheel of Destiny. [Editor’s note: The votes are in and that list of available games is up – you can donate now!]

But what should you be doing between now and then?

We’ve got some ideas!

Get those video game title requests in! Request Games here. DONATE! Your requests have been heard and our list of games for UPickVG IV is now available, so get your donatin’ on!
Add the marathon to your calendar so you don’t forget to tune in!
Tell everyone you know about UPickVG and how awesome it’s going to be. Use the graphic up top, and share this post with the sharing buttons down below.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. We post cool video game stuff and updates about UPickVG IV.
Visit our Watch Now page every Sunday at 4pm EDT (8pm UTC) – we do live rehearsal broadcasts every week! Tune in, heckle us in the chat, and get hyped for the big marathon on June 12th!

Get Hyped!!

Behind the Scenes: Our Streaming Setup “Before”

Long-time viewers and anyone who’s watched our archive footage can tell you: our streaming setup works (most of the time), but it ain’t always pretty. The unique challenges of our charity marathon stream (changing games every hour, on the hour, with less than 10 minutes’ warning as to what game & system to switch to) have led to a lot of “just make it work” type solutions to get us on the air.

This month, we’re changing that. My co-founder (Grant) and I (Stephonee) scrounged together some money to build a brand new, designed-for-the-UPickVG-stream, powerful PC with a built-in capture card that can handle direct capture of all the consoles we use, plus putting more PC games into the mix.

While we wait for all the parts we ordered to come in, we thought it might be fun to do a tour of the old setup – what we have been using to broadcast “After Hours” rehearsal broadcasts to you (Sundays at 4pm EST!).

Here are our “Before” pictures:

: In the foreground, our TV camera and the pile o’ stuff that it rests on. In the background (left to right): our room camera “Gerald” on his tripod, the Chat monitor, and our streaming laptop.

: A nice view of what our chat/twitter monitor and streaming laptop look like.

: This is pretty much what we, the players, see when we are streaming a rehearsal.

: Gerald, our room camera, is ready for his close-up.

: Our streaming laptop is so old, one of the USB ports works fine, one half-works, and one is completely dead. This is the half-working one – taping the cord down prevents it from disconnecting the camera in the middle of a stream.

Update: We have “after” pictures for you now, too!

Shiny and New: Video Archive Page!

Have you ever visited our Twitch.tv page and been like “Man, guys, I’d love to watch some of your old stuff, but this is crazy hard to navigate!” We feel you, friend. So that’s why we’ve painstakingly dug up all of our past footage and put it into a handy-dandy guide for you! It’s called the “Video Archive” and it’s available for your perusal… right now!

Looking for that time when we all sang the theme song while Grant rolled up the world in Beautiful Katamari? It’s on there. Or that time when Santa Jimmy needed at least two people to help him drive a vertical tank in Steel Battalion? That’s there, too. And when we needed more zell because of Snow White Dan? That too! Well, sort of.

2012 was a really weird year

Some footage has been lost to technical difficulties along the way. We’re super sorry about that (we’re probably more sorry than anyone)! But the vast majority of it is still available, and now it’s really easy to find what you want to watch, on the spiffy Video Archive page.

And of course, as we hold more marathons, we’ll update the page with new footage. So bookmark the page (or whatever it is you crazy kids do these days to keep links for later), just in case you miss a minute or two of our next U-Pick Video Game Marathon for Charity.

Achievement Unlocked: Weekly Broadcasts

2015 is upon us, fellow humans! Time to tighten our belts, focus our minds, and make a list of goals for the new year. Our resolution: more video game broadcasts!

That’s right, friends: the U-Pick Team has leveled-up and we will be streaming fresh batches of games every week. These shorter broadcasts will be more casual, sort of like rehearsals for the bigger charity events later in the year.

Some weeks we will be playing games based around a central theme, like “Oddball SquareSoft Titles” or “Girls’ Night In.” Other weeks will be a random assortment of awesome, like last week’s broadcast of the original Legend of Zelda, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Bayonetta 2, and some bonus Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Speaking of last week’s broadcast, the archive footage is uploaded and available for your viewing pleasure for the next two weeks. Just hop on over to our Twitch.tv page and enjoy the first of many weekly broadcasts!

Be sure to tune in every Sunday around 4pm EST (9pm UTC) for a fresh line-up of great games and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates on the next batch of titles. Here’s a hint for next week: car crashes, dopey dinosaurs, and cheerleaders with chainsaws.

Battle of the Birthdays: September 21st 10am – 10pm

Battle of the Birthdays by ariart

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!

Our founders have birthdays one week apart and very different ideas about what video games make a good charity marathon broadcast. So we’ve pledged to give up their birthdays and each try to out-do each other in a charity marathon Battle of the Birthdays! So what do you say – are you #TeamGrant or are you #TeamStephonee?

Vote now! It’s super easy:

Pick a game off the Available Games List – Grant and Stephonee have each selected 15 of the games they think would make for a good marathon (or would torture the other person the most). You can pick any game from the list.
Donate to our charity: water page and put the name of your game from Step #1 in the comment!
???*
PROFIT!

* Tune in Sunday, September 21st from 10 am – 10 pm Eastern to see Grant and Stephonee play the top games as the Wheel of Destiny (and your donations!) dictates. Tune in… where? Right here on UPickVG.com, of course! (n00b!)

Preview Show: Saturday September 20th starting at 8pm Eastern
We’ll get you psyched up by insulting each other while we play a few games from the list, with some special guests!

It’s coming, it’s coming, IT’S COMING! The 4th U-Pick Video Game Marathon for Charity (“UPickVG IV” for short) will be broadcast live on the interwebs June 12th-14th, 2015.

But what should you be doing between now and then?

Get Hyped!!

Live point rankings: