Pokemon Marathon Tries to Catch ‘Em All For Charity

The team at Full Restore is in the midst of a 96-hour non-stop Pokemon marathon to raise money for the British Red Cross.

Around this time last year a group of Welsh students calling themselves “Pokemon4Japan” took their cue from the Desert Bus and played Pokemon for four days straight to raise money for Japanese relief efforts. That effort added up to roughly £4000 ($6354) in donations, enough to convince the team to come back this year and do it all again.

Now working under the name Full Restore, the group is once again suffering through 96 hours of self-inflicted, non-stop Pokemon insanity, all to raise funds for the British Red Cross. With just over 24 hours left, the team has brought in a little over £2400 ($3813) and is hoping that a big push in the final day will put it over last year’s total. Team member Alice Rourke, aka “smooshie1592” on Twitter, has even pledged to get a tattoo of Magikarp if the team can manage to double last year’s total.

I readily admit that I don’t know the first thing about Pokemon except that there’s apparently some rule dictating that they must all be apprehended for maximum satisfaction, but these details about the Full Restore Pokemonathon sound like they might be important, so here we go. The team is playing with a “no reset, no reload” rule, so even if they kill a legendary Pokemon [which I guess is a pretty bad thing to do] or blow it hugely in some other way, they’ll continue to soldier on as best they can. They’re playing only First, Second or Third generations of the handheld games, which unfortunately leaves out “Vietnamese Crystal” [I always thought that was some kind of Star Trek narcotic] and while they don’t want to risk corrupting their games, they will do the “Mew glitch” if enough people donate to make it happen.

That entire last paragraph means absolutely nothing to me but the bottom line is that these guys are putting themselves through the wringer to help other people. So if you’ve got a few extra bucks kicking around and an urge to do your monthly solid, go watch them suffer a bit at fullrestore.co.uk, and then toss them your dough and be thankful it’s not you.