This year's live stream will start on Sunday, October 8th at 11 AM EST! (Mon, Oct 9th at exactly midnight Japan time)

What is Extra Life?

Many of you already know what Extra Life is all about. For those of you that don't, it's an event each year where gamers from all over the world pledge to partake in a 24-hour gaming marathon to raise money for sick and injured kids under the care of Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.

Watch my promotional video here!

Here’s how it works:

Gamers sign up, choose a children's hospital to support, ask for donations, and play games. It doesn't matter what the game is or even if you fall asleep before 24 hours is up, what matters is how much you can raise for your hospital. This year, as always, I'm playing in support of the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital in Maine.

My goals for this year:

Last year, my goal was to beat 10 games from my past Extra Life events in an any% speedrun (getting to the credits as fast as possible). After over 43 hours of nonstop streaming (...never again!), I beat them all! In total, we raised over $4000 for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital!

This year, Gianni and I will be taking things outside as we attempt to walk 110,000 steps (~80km) in a single day while playing Pikmin Bloom, a mobile AR walking game, similar to Pokémon GO.

Our goals are as follows:

• Screenshot the in-game backpack after 99,999 steps (the max it can display before rolling over to 0)

• Bloom as many flowers as possible to keep our nectar supply up

• Complete both Weekly Challenges (walk 100k steps & plant 30,000 flowers) in a single day with no help from anyone else on our team.

• Be the first to show verifiable proof that we've walked over 100k steps in a single day in the game!

• Raise as much money as possible for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital!

Children's Miracle Network Hospitals like Barbara Bush rely heavily on donations. You can help hospitals provide better care for patients and help families pay for expensive medical procedures by making a donation today! Every dollar counts. Thank you for your support!

Top donations hall of fame:

My Extra Life Timeline:

Over the past 10 years, I have raised a whopping $15,139.00 for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital thanks to all the generous donations from people like you! Let's make year 11 amazing too!

2022

Both filmed and streamed from Japan, I had these famous words to say in my promotional video, which you can see here, "please help make year 10, a decade of Extra Life, the special year it deserves to be!" My goal was to play 10 games from my past Extra Life events in an any% speedrun (getting to the credits as fast as possible). The 10 games I played were: Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Pokémon Snap, Yoshi's Story, Kirby 64: the Crystal Shards, Super Mario 64, Pikmin 1, Super Mario Galaxy, Pokémon Yellow, and the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So, did everyone deliver? Did friends, family, and complete strangers come together to make it a truly unforgettable year? After 43 hours and 26 minutes of continuous streaming (...never again!) and a universe-ending $4,370.68 raised for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital, I'd say yes. Yes they did! Special thanks to Gianni who stayed awake nearly the entire stream to keep me well fed! You can check out the stream in two parts due to the blue screen of death cutting off my stream here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Extra Life United, April 2022

Extra Life United is an annual in-person tournament hosted by Extra Life where participants compete to get a portion of the prize pool money donated to their fundraising pages. April 2022 was my first time participating, thanks to the online option due to the pandemic. I played in the Pokémon Unite tournament alongside Gia, Blaise, and two other Extra Lifers, Loopi and TimFoolery. We managed to place 3rd overall netting us a nice $240 each! The livestream can be found on Twitch here: part 1 and part 2.

2021

Filmed in the Philippines and carried out in Japan, I played Splatoon 2 in 2021! My goals were to complete the single player campaign, 100% the Octo Expansion DLC (including defeating Inner Agent 3, the most notoriously difficult Nintendo boss of all time!), reach the Profreshional rank in Salmon Run, and play as many ranked matches as I could fit in the remaining time. I managed to complete it all in 21 hours and 42 minutes! We once again crushed our goal with an absolutely apocalyptic $2750 raised! You can check out the promotional video here! The full livestream can be found on Twitch here: part 1 and part 2.

2020

After 8 years, I felt it was time to go back to my roots and once again play the franchise that started my Extra Life journey: The Legend of Zelda. I played through Breath of the Wild and completed all 120 shrines, found all 13 memories, and defeated Calamity Ganon in 22 hours and 56 minutes. I spent the remaining hour completing the Tarrey Town side quest. I streamed from the Philippines where Kristoffer, the professional chef, was kind enough to make me food as I played. All in all, we raised an earth-shattering $2120, making it once again the greatest year on record, and during a global pandemic no less! I hope we can get even remotely close to that amount again in the future! You can watch the promotional video here. The death compilation here. The entire stream can be found on Twitch here: part 1 and part 2.

2019

Since I managed to complete three games the year before, I thought I'd step things up yet again by attempting to complete four Nintendo 64 games (Super Mario 64, Kirby the Crystal Shards, Pokémon Snap, and Yoshi's Story). This would prove to be a huge mistake as it took me 26 hours and 35 minutes to beat them all! This was mostly due to fooling around after beating Mario 64, attempting to collect all enemy cards in Kirby 64, and failing to get all the melons in Yoshi's Story (never mention this again!). Aside from these miscellaneous failures, here's the breakdown of how long it took to beat each game: I beat Mario 64 in 6 hours, 38 minutes, 26 seconds, Kirby 64 in 3 hours, 50 minutes, 4 seconds, Pokémon Snap in 2 hours, 14 minutes, 7 seconds, and Yoshi's Story in 11 hours, 56 minutes, 46 seconds. In total, we raised a record-breaking $1466.32 for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital! I had to prepare far ahead since I was planning a 4-month trip to New Zealand and wouldn't be home until late December. This resulted in the first dual-country video production! You can watch the promotional video here. The entire stream can be found on twitch here.

2018

I didn't want another short year so I played three Kirby games back to back. I 100% beat Kirby's Epic Yarn (despite spending 2 hours on that stupid snowy 4-wheeler level), Kirby's Nightmare in Dreamland (I beat the whole game in less time than that stupid snowy 4-wheeler level), and Kirby's Return to Dreamland (using the Wiimote D-pad for that long made my thumb sore for an actual month). It took me 22 hours and 41 minutes and 40 deaths to beat all three games, donating a dollar per death. This was also the first year I got to use an Elgato capture device, which greatly increased the quality of the stream. I advertised my Twitch page and promotional video to all my Korean students, making 2018 my most watched stream ever with 50 active viewers at one point! In total, we raised an incredible $1171 for the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital, breaking the previous year's amount once again. You can watch the promotional video here.

2017

I played Pikmin 1, getting all 30 ship parts, growing 1000 pikmin of each color, and beating the game without any pikmin deaths (okay, I reset the game and donated a dollar when I lost some pikmin). It took me a record low time of just 10 hours and 58 minutes (I swear it should have taken way longer) and we raised a crazy $1025. I was really not expecting to break $1000 again let alone break a new record, but was pleasantly surprised. Pikmin is probably the most underappreciated franchise of all time and while Pikmin 2 is my favorite of the trilogy, I decided, like Mario in 2016, it was best to play the first one first. If you've never played any Pikmin games, play one ASAP! With the help of my foreign friends living in Korea, I managed to once again throw together another video. You can watch the promotional video here.

2016

I played Super Mario Galaxy, getting all 120 stars and defeating Bowser with both Mario and Luigi. It took me 26 hours and 58 minutes (...yeah... there was one rolling ball level that took over an hour...) and we raised a whopping $1021. I actually wanted to play Mario Galaxy 2, my favorite of the two, but I thought it would be better to do the first one first and save the sequel for another year. This was the first time breaking the $1000 mark and since I was going to be living in Korea the following year, I didn't know how feasible it would be to set up a stream there. I thought about 2016 possibly being my last year of Extra Life. Thankfully, I made it work overseas as well! You can watch the promotional video here.

2015

I played Pokémon Yellow (and some of Red and Blue) and caught all 151 Pokémon in 23 hours and 40 minutes, raising $380. I love Zelda, but since Extra Life was becoming a yearly tradition for me, I thought it was time to start exploring some of my other beloved franchises; and what better way to do that than complete the Pokédex in my very first Pokémon game ever? As a kid, this endeavor took me several years to complete and so I wondered if it was possible to do it all in under 24 hours. I also finally managed to get a proper stream going with a face cam, microphone, and updated my progress as I played. Fun fact: this was the only year to have raised less than the previous, which I attribute to many of my friends just graduating college and having to pay off loans while looking for work. That, or maybe they just really hate Pokémon, who knows! Filmed in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, this was my first multi-state video production. You can watch the promotional video here. 

2014

Not knowing how to step it up from the previous year, I decided to play through the harder version of Ocarina of Time, the Master Quest Edition, beating it 100% in 18 hours and 8 minutes and raising $715. This was the first year I made a promotional video to advertise and explain to my friends exactly what I was doing (while the year before I simply wrote a couple Facebook updates and didn't really know that much about the event). While being on crutches at the time, I had lots of time to sit and think which is how, one week before the event, I came up with the idea to make a video. With six times the amount raised from the year before, I'd say it was a successful endeavor despite the production being limited due to time and my injury. It was also the first time I set up a proper stream, although I lacked a face camera and mic. You can watch the promotional video here.

2013

I played through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with the goal to beat it 100%. I did it in 16 hours flat, raising $120. Aside from being an amazing game and one I've beaten 100% countless times in the past, I chose to play Ocarina of Time because I was curious to see if I knew it well enough to beat it in a single sitting. You can really see the evolution of my streams over time. I wasn't anticipating doing a stream but since friends showed some interest in it, I ended up last-minute pointing my laptop webcam at the projector screen as I played, which is why the game is a bit slanted in the below screenshot. Messy, but it got the job done!

Thank you!

To all donors past, present, and future; to everyone who has helped with a video production; to everyone who has tuned into a live stream, and to everyone who has supported me in person during an event: thank you for keeping me going 11 years in a row!

Funny comments hall of fame:

$100+ donations hall of fame:

2016

• Alec Correa: $100
• Joseph Jarvis: $100
• Linda Camlin: $100 “We just watched the promotional video and are blown away by the devotion and talent that goes into this. We're honored and so pleased to support you. -Toad's parents.”

2017

• Spenser Wood: $100 “I'm so glad to see you at it again this year John. Keep up the awesome work!”
• KupoKyle: $150 “I'm a man of my word.”
• Robert Correa (2017): $100 “Keep up the good work, John-sama!”

2018

• Patricia Jarvis: $100
• Shawn Nguyen: $100 “For the kids! Good job Pkmn John!”

2019

• Patricia Jarvis: $100
• KupoKyle: $164 “Hi from the couch!”
• Nick Kaschak (3HourShrines & SlowShrines): $100 ($40.96 “This is what 64 $0.64 is worth. So according to your description you have to donate $64. LOL ¯_(ツ)_/¯" ) ($59.04 "And this is the rest to match the $100 you have to give. LOL”)
• Robert Correa: $100
• Jason Hammond: $164.64

2020

• Patricia Jarvis: $100
• Russell Sargent: $100
• TheKyle (KupoKyle): $110 “Gotta keep the tradition alive <3”
• Anonymous Donor: $100
• Seeligs (2020): $100
• Ethan Paulsen: $125
• Jeff Connelly: $122.09
• Shawn <3: $192
• Kjetil Rossignol (Big Pimpy 2020): $100 “Consider this goal met.”

2021

• Patricia Jarvis: $150
• Jeff Connelly (Gir): $100
• Ethan Paulsen: $165 “Paint those kids a better future, king!”
• John Ciocchi (pls buy more fortnite skisns): $100
• Drs. Josh and Jenny Havelin: $100 “#UNEresearch #HonorsBioRepresent”
• Jason Hammond (John's Awkard Uncle): $325 “Glad you're still at it! Making up for missing a year man, cheers!”
• Joe Jarvis (ジョー・ジャーヴィス): $100.08
• John Jarvis: $100
• KupoKyle: $330 “I see no other Top Donors up here. Other than me”
• Robert Correa: $100 “Good Work, John!”
• Nick Kaschak & Nicolle Moore (rugsnatchernick + tentacolle): $150 “sry we couldn't join this year and make fun of you the whole time (im sure Gia did enough of that anyway tho), but i bet it was full of squid kids and ink guns and a lot of you dying”
• Welch Fluorocarbon Inc: $511

2022

• Extra Life United: $240 “Extra Life 2022 Prize Pool Winnings”
• Patricia Jarvis: $150
• Ethan Paulsen: $355.30 ($285.31 “Now you're already halfway there! Hᴀʟғᴡᴀʏ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ! ᴴᵃˡᶠʷᵃʸ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉᵎ ₕₐₗ𝒻𝓌ₐᵧ ₜₕₑᵣₑ!"), ($22.77 “Now this one is RuneScape related.”) ($47.22 Let's make it look clean (and add me to the top 3)”)
• KupoKyle: $555
• Anonymous: $250
• Kim Kerr: $100 “Sorry I couldn’t pop in due to blackouts here! Have a very happy holiday!
• Josh & Jenny Havelin: $180 “$1 per Melon on the “not a melon run””
• Shane Newman: $555 ($365.70 “Nice”), ($189.30 “Shorthop laser”)
• Anonymous: $375
• Nick Halka (Aeroverra): $314 ($100) ($100 “Incredible”), ($50 “Yeeee. Congrats on 10 years.”), ($64 “Have a good night! I'll say hi in the morning if I get up soon enough! Good luck, hope to see you double your goal!”)
• Joe Jarvis (ジョー・ジャーヴィス): $100 “頑張って！ 10年おめでとう！”
• Robert Correa: $100
• Nick Kaschak (coolguy1): $151 ($150 “I can’t believe you did the melon run without me. I’ll never forget that.”), ($1 “Butt”)
• Anonymous: $100
• John Jarvis: $100 “I'm finally making my donation after my 43 hours and 26 minutes of nonstop streaming. I killed many squids, Links, Pokémon, Marios, Yoshis, Kirbys, and Pikmin, so the least I can do is donate $10 for each year of Extra Life for my 10th year! Thank you to everyone who showed up in the stream, donated, and supported me this year and all past years, and for future years too!”

2023

• John Jarvis: $110 “I'm starting things off with a donation. I'm going to walk 110,000 steps, so 1,000 steps = $1. Hence the $110 donation. In addition, I will donate $1 for every 1000 steps that I don't walk up to that 110,000 goal. But since I'm definitely going to walk them all, my next donation will be $0. I will use the money saved to buy new shoes.”
• Robert C: $100 “Keep up the good work!”
• Mom and Dad: $200
• Ethan Paulsen (GIM TFR Fail): $100 “Better do some Mushrooms with me next week!” *Editor's note: he is referring to MUSHROOM CHALLENGES in PIKMIN BLOOM!
• Nick and Nicolle!: $222.22 "we cant wait to join you guys on this walk soon! but like, maybe we do 110,000 steps over the course of like, a few days please"
• John Ciocchi (Play fortnite plz): $100
• The Kaschaks: $125
• Kimberly Kerr: $125
• Joe Jarvis (ジョー・ジャーヴィス): $110
• Jason: $400 "Sorry I missed it! I'm gonna sit and watch through to see what I missed. Hope the two of you are doing great over there!"
• Drs Jenny and Josh Havelin: $110
• Welch Fluorocarbon, Inc.: $500