Sonic: The Marathon - Interview with Tyler Smart

ll too often, uninformed pundits and the general populace believe almost too entirely that nothing good can come of video games. Although there are several studies to the contrary, there seems to be a general consensus among the ignorant; video games invariably lead to brain rot, obesity and violent behaviour. However, over the weekend one man proved without a doubt that there is all kinds of good to come out of gaming as well.

Streaming live from The Last Game Store in Halifax, Nova Scotia, one Tyler Smart completed a journey that took months to complete. His efforts came to a head with an all-day marathon on January 25, 2014, consisting of every classic, numbered entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, plus three. The goal was to raise money for Alice Housing, a local organization providing shelter to women and children escaping from (often-severely) violent homes.

Through months of fund raising with raffle tickets for prizes donated by several local game and comic stores as well as the now-iconic Sonic the Hedgehog hats that can be seen floating around the whole city, Tyler and his small crew managed to get an impressive $2500.00 before the event actually took place, with many more donations coming in during the live stream itself. I got a chance to talk with Tyler to learn and understand the whys and hows of this fantastic event as he tackled Sonic and Knuckles.

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SER: Thanks for speaking with us today. Could you tell us a bit about the event and what inspired it?

TYLER: Well, I was inspired by Adam Strickland's Megamanathon events [a series of local Mega Man-themed charity events for children's hospitals] when he was raising money for the I.W.K. [Hope Children's Hospital]. I went to both of them, stayed for most of them and I had always loved the Sonic games growing up and I went up to Adam and I said, “man, wouldn't it be cool if we could do a Sonic version of the Megamanathon thing?” and he agreed. So, we set the wheels in motion and we're here today to raise money for Alice Housing, a women's shelter where people can escape abusive situations by playing Sonic the Hedgehog games.

SER: What was the reason for choosing this particular charity?

TYLER: It's a funny story, actually. Long story short, when we started putting this together, we didn;t even have a charity because, I guess, the Child's Play I.W.K. Branch they had a wish list that was mostly filled by the Megamanathon, so we needed a new charity. So we thought about it for a while and then one day, a representative from Alice Housing came in . They were doing their own thing at the time, and they were selling tickets, some kind of raffle tickets to win some sort of Marvel work signed by the artist or something, and they came and asked Adam [Perry, owner of The Last Game Store] if he was interested in selling them and Adam was like, “I can do you one better; how would you feel if I ran this event and raised money for your cause?” And yeah, that's how we came to Alice Housing.

SER: How long did it take to put together the event?

TYLER: We would have started pretty much the night of the second Megamanathon, I think it was like, four-ish months ago? Réal, do you remember?

RÉAL: Ah... Yeah, a couple of months...

TYLER: Réal did a lot of the stuff behind the scenes.

RÉAL: We did it- it was on July 20^th, was the last Megamanathon.

TYLER: Oh! So it's been, yeah, so six months.

SER: What were the biggest challenges in organizing this event?

TYLER: To be completely honest, I'm only really here playing the games. Adam and Réal did a lot of the actual organization since they had the ground work in place the Megamanathons. For me, it was just practising certain parts, particularly the Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1.

SER: Was there a specific selection process with the games that you're playing? 

TYLER: It was something that we came up with in about five minutes, it was basically our goal was to get all of the classic [Sonic] games which, funnily enough, make the same story arc. I don;t know why I agreed to do Sonic 3D Blast because that game is... not god at all. But basically, yeah, we just wanted to do the classic Sonic games that people would be familiar with, so we came up with Sonic 1, 2, 3, Knuckles, 3D Blast, CD and both parts of Episode 4.

SER: How much have you raised so far? 

TYLER: When we started, when we came into the store today, The Last Game Store alone raised $2300.00. We're still awaiting totals from Giant Robot, Strange Adventures and whatever we raise today because that's when a lot of the money comes in and also we have an unknown number of online donations. Since we don't have our own widget today, the donations are taken directly through Alice Housing 's website, so we'll have to contact them after today and get the number for that but I'd say we're easily at $3000.00 by now.

SER: Now the turnout here today hasn't been that bad, there's been quite a few people that have stopped in and checked it out, a lot of donations even while I've been here. Is this something that you would organize again?

TYLER: Yes, I would love to do it again next year, for sure. I'm thinking next year maybe we'll do some of the better 3D games, but we'd have to iron that out down the road, but I'd love to make it an annual thing.

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Tyler and his friends would end up bringing in $2635.00 in donations. The Last Game Store owner Adam Perry also contributed heavily to Alice housing, not only by providing his store as a venue and by hosting the streaming of the event on Twitch but also with donated video game consoles and games for Alice Housing's displaced children. Adam will continue to sell the iconic hats and purchase games which will still contribute to Tyler's cause even after this event.