This is moreso a long comment regarding the Nibbler run Tim and Dwayne did during Labor Day weekend.

I myself am an aging gamer of the 80s and am familiar with playing a video game for an extended period of time. I know that as the body gets older, wounds do not heal quite so fast. We supposedly grow up and lose interest in games. There are of course exceptions to this. Some people want to game as long as humanly possible no matter what their age. Doyle Brunson, a hall of fame poker player, even added this quip, "We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stopped playing." He might have even gotten that phrase from someone else, I dunno.

I watched bits and pieces of the Nibbler marathon this past weekend. I enjoyed the fact that the gamers commented and even had fun with their runs at video game immortality. Marathons like this used to only come at the tail end of local news once upon a time, but now in this day and age watching the marathon as it's happening is a sight to see. I did hear Tim say this would be his last attempt at a marathon in Nibbler, and that he's considering retiring (something Brett Favre is having trouble accepting). While I did not actually see the condition of his hand after playing, I can only assume it would take a very long time to heal without special medicine.

Tim is considering/being urged to try another attempt at the marathon again this weekend. He mentioned the glove he was using was eventually getting too slick to play with. The solution to this was either have multiple gloves on hand and change them out, or if it's dryer friendly, throw them in the dryer. The world record holder in most number of skeets shot with a shotgun in 1 hour did not use a single shotgun. He had a team that would dip the used shotguns in water to cool them off, reload the shells and hand it to the shooter. He used about 10 shotguns and kept the cycle going. Tim could do the same with the gloves. I hear athletic tape may be used several times over. Sweat will cause the tape to lose adhesive and he'd be back to the same problem again. Could Tim use both tape and a glove or would Twin Galaxy say that is too much modification?

If Tim goes for this marathon again, he will of course have a group of supporters like myself urging him on and keeping him from losing his mind... heh heh. If he officially decides to retire, I will respect him no less for the accomplishments he has achieved. I know I have perhaps gone off topic a time or two here ranting a bit, but felt I needed to do so.

Also... in order for more people to be aware of these said marathon runs, we need to get the word out. Talk to your friends, arcade owners, neighbors. Let them know about this site. The more people that know about it, the greater chance we have of saving the arcades in the first place. There's an article in my local paper about my arcade here in town and it mentioned there was no arcade tracking site to keep up with such things... obviously the writer of the article wasn't aware of us!

Thanks for letting everyone know it was you Clint, I thought we were having issues with the Forums now.

I for one spent almost all of Saturday watching Tim, til my router died on me early Sunday morning anyway, and was just in awe the entire time. It's times like these, where the people with a pure love of all things gaming can show the world, and even themselves what they are truly made of. No matter how it ended, I'm proud that to see that Tim and Dwayne stuck it out for as long as they did. As much as the term "retirement" is bandied about these days, I hope that's not actually the case, as Tim has shown that no matter how weary you are, there's no limit to the things you can do for something you love so much.

-Charles

Tim is playing again starting this Saturday (11/7) morning.

same location.