So I posted this whole thing on another forum but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to post here too. I can’t imagine there’s many of you who would use this small forum for Smash discussion instead of Smashboards but I’m sure you have your reasons (if any of you actually exist).
For those of you who don’t know, there is currently a contest going on between several games vying for the 8th spot in EVO 2013, the world’s biggest fighting game tournament. Whichever game wins will have the opportunity to be on the main stage and have their matches streamed online in front of over 100,000 people. The way to win is to collectively donate the most money for breast cancer research under your game’s name. They have set up links with individual donation buttons for each game and if you go to each page, you can see how much they’ve donated. Right now, a very good indie game called Skullgirls is winning with $21,315. Coming up in second is Super Smash Bros Melee with $16,490. If you want to know how much the rest have, you can find them here.
Up until Thursday night, Melee was sitting in a very comfortable lead with $14,000 but, due to a big livestream from the developers of Skullgirls, they jumped up to their current number from only $6000. However, Melee isn’t out of this just yet. We only reached our current numbers because of a livestream of our own in which we managed to raise $9000 in one night. And whereas it took Skullgirls the combined efforts of their developers, their entire voice cast, Kyle Hebert, and a streamed tournament, we managed to raise our donations by merely streaming a podcast. This isn’t over by a long shot because we’ve got several more plans to raise money behind Melee’s name.
So what is it you can do to help? Well, the most straight forward thing would be to donate. I’ve been hearing from some people that it doesn’t take certain credit cards or bank accounts from Europe but there are trustworthy people in the Smash community who are willing to donate for you if you send them the money through PayPal. “Scar” is definitely trustworthy if you can’t find anybody. He played a major role in organizing Melee’s first livestream.
In addition, there are multiple incentives being thought up for people who donate this weekend. Melee It On Me, the podcast that hosted the first livestream, is planning on streaming once again with even more matched donations (basically, for every dollar the community donates, they’re pledging to donate another one.) So if you really want to maximize the amount that is donated to Melee, donate after 10:00 AM PST today (1 PM EST) and all through Sunday. The full list of incentives can be found in this GoogleDocs page, which will be updated as more things are added.
Also, make sure you check out the Breast Cancer Research Drive forum on Smashboards where many people (including me!) are offering extra incentives to donate towards Melee and breast cancer research. Steam keys, a rare Banjo-Kazooie plushie, Beats headphones, some guy willing to dye his beard whatever color you want!
While the Melee It On Me livestream goes on through the whole weekend, there is something else that you might be slightly more interested in. Someone named Oddler is doing a 48-hour Legend of Zelda livestream which has actually just started. He won’t be matching donations, but he’s hoping to get plenty of donations from people who wouldn’t ordinarily know about the drive. However, if you’re willing to turn off adblocker, he is planning on donating all his ad revenue from the stream towards Melee. Just going to his stream and turning the volume off would be helping us out.
I’ll be updating this post with more information as things happen. Please help support Melee. We’re all fans of Nintendo here and we all remember where this podcast started. Not to mention, we’ll supporting research against breast cancer. Do it for boobs!