If anyone is interested in trying something like this themselves, I recommend checking out:

http://pyweek.org

http://ludumdare.com/

PyWeek is a week long game programming competition for Python developers, and Ludum Dare is all about 48 hour mostly from scratch video game development. Both are just for fun, but the competitive setup makes for good motivation to accomplish something in a short amount of time. It's lots of fun.