Voice Actor Billy Kametz’s Childhood Friends to Stream Super Mario 64 for Charity

 

It’s been nearly a year since the passing of beloved voice actor Billy Kametz—known for roles like Naofumi in The Rising of the Shield Hero, Josuke in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable and many more—but his memory remains strong in the hearts and minds of friends and fans alike. After sharing news of his stage IV colon cancer diagnosis in April 2022, Kametz passed on June 9, 2022 at the age of 35, and now his childhood friends are here to honor him with a charity video game stream.

 

Fellow voice actor Erica Lindbeck shared the news that Billy Kametz’s friends are planning to stream Super Mario 64 on YouTube to benefit the Colon Cancer Coalition, which promotes education, awareness and screening for colon cancer. The stream is scheduled for May 20 from 7:00am – 7:00pm PT, and further details are available at the Billy Kametz 120 Star Challenge website.

 

Some of @BillyKametz’s childhood friends are going to be streaming Super Mario 64 on YouTube to benefit the @ColonCancerCoal on May 20th, 10AM EST-10PM EST✨

Link below for details. A retweet/like/any size donation would mean the world. Thank you ❤️https://t.co/rHrKNZR71E

— Erica Lindbeck (@ericalindbeck) May 17, 2023

 

More from the website:

 

It’s been nearly a year since we lost Billy to colon cancer.

 

As his long-time friends, we have been trying to make sense of his death and still struggle with the grief, and we know many of his fans feel the same way. Some of you may have met him personally at a convention or know him from his work. We were truly moved by the outpouring of love from the anime and gaming communities throughout everything. As his non-show-biz-adjacent friends, we knew he was making a name for himself as a voice actor, but I don’t think any of us realized our boyhood friend from Central Pennsylvania had become a star.

 

In his absence, we have been trying to think of appropriate ways to honor Billy’s memory. Those who knew Billy understood what video games meant to him. It wasn’t just a paycheck, but a higher calling. We grew up playing video games together, spending countless hours in our parents’ basements locked in fierce competition. (Those who challenged him at cons can attest to Billy’s Super Smash Brothers prowess in particular.) A hairbrained idea we always talked about was throwing a “120-star Marathon,” in which we would attempt to collect all the stars in Super Mario 64 in one sitting. It was our white whale – a milestone we never got the chance to realize with our friend.

 

That’s why on Saturday, May 20, we’re launching the inaugural Billy Kametz Memorial 120-Star Party! Two teams of Billy’s childhood friends will duke it out across the Mushroom Kingdom in a high-stakes race to accrue as many stars as possible in one sitting. That means the 100-coin stars, the eight-red-coin stars, that one with the big penguin, all of them! Will either team collect all 120 and unlock Yoshi before passing out from exhaustion? You’ll have to tune in to find out!

 

We’ll be streaming this event live on YouTube and collecting donations to benefit the Colon Cancer Coalition.

 

We’re a nostalgic bunch, and you can be sure we’ll be sharing some funny, heartfelt, and yes, some embarrassing stories from growing up with Billy. We hope this will be a window into what Billy was really like as a person, from the people who knew him best.

 

Source: Erica Lindbeck on Twitter

 

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. You can read his comics at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter @Moldilox.