MST3K Is Back On Thanksgiving!

In the not-too-distant-future, next Thanksgiving A.D. There will be a guy named Joel, not too different from you or me….hosting the second streaming Turkey Day MST3K movie marathon!

The Turkey Day marathon will be streaming live starting at noon EST on MST3Kturkeyday.com. They are streaming the show via YouTube, and I believe you’ll also be able to see the show on the Official MST3K YouTube Channel.  However, some report that the 2013 marathon wasn’t playable on TV-based players like Roku.

They’ll play six episodes, with host segments by Joel Hodgson – so it’ll probably last until about 9-10 PM? The schedule hasn’t been announced yet, but you can tweet Joel with your suggestions.

Speaking of episodes – the Official MST3K YouTube Channel has two full MST3K episodes available – Manos: The Hands of Fate and Mitchell! For your convenience, I’ve embedded Manos below so you can watch it immediately.

Video Game Movie Marathon Playlist

I mentioned in my last video game movie marathon post that you could spend 24 hours just watching video from the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy of video games. That got me wondering. What other video games “movies” are out there on YouTube? Which have stories worth watching? Which come with no annoying nerd commentary?

Lists of Video Games With Great Stories

The internet has some opinions on what video games have the best stories. Two sources seemed to be helpful the most helpful.

The first is the WatchMojo video embedded below. This video takes you on a visual tour of video games recognized as having great stories.

The second was this article from geek.com. It not only identified video games with great stories, it provides YouTube videos directly in the article. Nice!

The Video Game Movie Marathon Playlist

Based on these two sources, I created a YouTube playlist containing the “movie editions” of 23 unique video games, clocking in at 114 hours of content. That’s 4.75 days of video game movie watching. For reference, Breaking Bad is 2 days and 14 hours. That’s just half the time of this playlist.

Factoring in a good eight hours of sleep per day, that is seven days of video game movies! Now there’s a movie marathon!

I’ve embedded the playlist below for your clicking pleasure. I’ve already started with the first movie, The Last of Us, and have been enjoying it. Good luck, and happy watching!

Video Game Movie Marathon

Video games don’t seem to translate very well to movies. Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 25 “best” movies adapted from video games has exactly zero movies rated “fresh”. And boy oh boy, some of the “best” are also some of the absolute worst cinema has to offer.

For this reason, a video game movie marathon may be ill-advised. The funny thing is, some video games are so rich in story, character, and special effects, it’s a shame they need to be “adapted” to a movie format in the first place. The first video games that come to mind are the Final Fantasy series of games.
Nintendo Power - Final Fantasy GuideWith completion times of 40 hours and up, players spend a lot of time in just a single Final Fantasy game. A lot of this time is fighting monsters, but a lot of this time is also getting to know the characters and driving forward the storyline. While monster-fighting is fun, it always seemed like a shame to me that the story couldn’t be replayed on “auto-pilot”, so to speak, to relive some of the plot.

Thanks to YouTube, it looks like I need not worry any longer. People out there with a lot of time and video editing skills have composed “movie” versions of video game play-throughs. They are called Let’s Play, and there are entire archives of them.

So, getting back to Final Fantasy, a quick search reveals three YouTube movies playing through Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and Final Fantasy XIII-3 (as an example – there are others). Even edited down to remove all monster-fight scenes, these movies are about eight, seven, and nine hours long, respectively. Collectively, they total 24 hours and 47 minutes of content. It’s a movie marathon in just three YouTube videos!

I’ve embedded each movie below for your convenience. The next time you have 24 hours to spare, and don’t want to invest brain cells in learning how to control characters, manage items, or defeat monsters, this is the movie marathon for you!

Final Fantasy XIII


Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-3

Photo by bochalla

24 Hour Movie Marathon Challenge

Ryan Chattaway laid down a 24 hour movie marathon challenge on YouTube: do a 24 hour movie marathon, follow his rules, and record your experience on YouTube! I think that’s a pretty interesting twist to the normal 24 hour movie marathon experience.

Below is his 2013 (second annual) call-to-action (and here is the original 2012 announcement in case you are interested).

His rules are:

  1. Watch one film over 180 minutes
  2. Watch one film you have no interest in watching
  3. Watch one best picture academy award
  4. Watch one of your favorite films

Below is his recording of his own 2012 marathon.

I like Ryan’s idea. Even though he did his marathon alone, he gets to share his experience virtually via YouTube, and so does everyone else performing his challenge. Having a social experience was always the most fun part of a movie marathon to me.

I don’t think anything can replace the in-person party aspect I love so much. However, extending the experience virtually is an excellent idea. I think I’ll give vlogging a try during my 2014 movie marathon.

If you liked Ryan’s rules, check out the 24-hour movie marathon rules I live by!