Last weekend, my good friend Adam and I undertook a monumental challenge – a head-to-head race to defeat Bowser in Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy respectively, whilst donning moustaches and streaming the experience to the world on Twitch.
The Cause – Movember
This charity stream was all in aid of Movember, the leading charity in supporting men’s mental health and suicide prevention, as well as prostate and testicular cancer support. A little about their cause in their own words:
Mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer – we’re taking them all on.
Since 2003, Movember has funded more than 1,250 men’s health projects around the world, challenging the status quo, shaking up men’s health research and transforming the way health services reach and support men.
Men’s health is in crisis. Men are dying on average 4.5 years earlier than women, and for largely preventable reasons.
A growing number of men – around 10.8M globally – are facing life with a prostate cancer diagnosis. Globally, testicular cancer is the most common cancer among young men. And across the world, one man dies by suicide every minute of every day, with males accounting for 69% of all suicides.
Movember is uniquely placed to address this crisis on a global scale. We fund groundbreaking projects all over the world, engaging men where they are to understand what works best and accelerate change.
Our aim for the day was to raise £650 – a target set by a previous stream we ran a couple of years ago, raising money for the homeless playing Zelda head-to-head. I am thrilled to say that thanks to a very generous audience of family, friends, colleagues and strangers, we absolutely smashed our goal, and as of the time of writing, our donation total has now exceeded £800!
A huge thank you to everyone who hopped onto the stream to help cheer us on – you helped make the day a joyous and entertaining ride from start to finish. Another huge thank you to anyone who chipped in and shared our page – I am very grateful to be surrounded by such generous people!
The Games
Our choice of games on the day were shaped by our own personal tastes.
I am partial to Nintendo’s creativity and experimentation that was on full display during the GameCube era, hence my adoration with Super Mario Sunshine. It’s a wacky departure from much of Mario’s catalogue, it was rushed to market and it’s full of strange jank (a word that I uttered often during the stream), but it’s got a special place in my heart as the sun-drenched oddball sequel to Super Mario 64. Sunshine’s road to Bowser involves collecting 50 Shine Sprites, which must include beating Episode 7 of each of the game’s worlds, showdowns with Shadow Mario. This meant my overall road to Bowser was shorter than Adam’s, but that I had no freedom in which challenges I faced. If I got stuck, I had no choice but to persevere.
Adam missed the Gamecube the first time around, and has a soft spot for the excellent Super Mario Galaxy. This is a far more well-loved title, debuting on the Wii and boasting a fully orchestral soundtrack which is widely adored and has gone onto feature in several titles since. Galaxy’s road to Bowser is a slightly more meaty 60 Stars, but Adam’s advantage here was that he was essentially free in his choice of what stars to tackle. There are a couple of mandatory challenges in the very opening of the game, but after that he was free to abandon or avoid anything too difficult.
The Race
Kicking off at 10am on Sunday, 2nd of November 2025, our journeys began, and the race was on. The constant comparison of Shine/Star totals kept the competition feeling intense throughout, as both of us remained fairly neck-and-neck, with Adam accumulating his Star tally slightly faster than me, but with the knowledge that he had slightly further to go. It is worth noting that whilst we are both familiar with our choice of titles, we had not touched either game in around five years, and we did zero research beforehand. We are not speedrunners, we are not even streamers, and these were essentially blind challenges relying wholely upon muscle memory and vibes.
I was first across the line, hitting the credits of Sunshine at a fairly respectable 4 hours and 28 minutes. This did include a couple of toilet breaks and a lunch break, so in actuality I could probably have shaved around 10-15 minutes off due to moments of inactivity, but either way I was pretty happy with this. Thankfully, many of Sunshine’s most difficult Shines are not required to reach Bowser, but even some of the most-feared challenges such as the Sand Bird and the Chuckster Fluddless level didn’t pose too much of a threat. I’m not sure if it was skill or luck, but either way I was pretty pleased with my result.
Adam came in with a respectable 5 hours and 2 minutes on Galaxy, not too far behind overall. Again, I think a few minutes for breaks could have been shaved off here too. I know he struggled and fumbled around early on in Beach Bowl Galaxy for a little too long early on, which ended up costing him valuable time as the end drew near. Again though, we did zero homework on this to plan our routes and approaches, and I suspect that the higher Star count may have ended up factoring into his loss too. Here’s a few words from Adam, reflecting on the day:
Doing Mario for Movember this year felt so right. It’s the 40th Anniversary of Mario, he has a moustache, it all made sense! It was a blast racing through Galaxy and Sunshine side-by-side – the ongoing star count made it entertaining and really fun and engaging. A huge thank you to all our friends, family and colleagues who donated towards men’s mental and physical health, it will all go a very long way!
All in all, win or lose, the day was an absolute blast. We were graced by over 55 viewers who dropped in across the day, and we exceeded our target and raised some cash for a very worthwhile cause.
Our Movember page is up for the rest of the month, so you can still donate to our cause if you can spare a few coins – https://uk.movember.com/mospace/15364949
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