After my visits in 2016 and 2017, I also visited the Comic Con Germany in Stuttgart (site map of the main hall) last Saturday. It was once again a lot of fun. I met several German comic artists, bought comics and original artwork, and saw an enormous number of cosplayers with great costumes. In this post, you can have a look at all the photos I took with some added commentary. You can click on each photo to see a larger version of it.

While it was still quite crowded on midday and the early afternoon, there were fewer visitors compared to the last two years. According to a newspaper article there were around 40,000 visitors instead of 50,000 visitors. That led to a better experience overall because making your way through the crowded floors was often a challenge in the last years. I hope that the convention stabilizes at the current visitor number to area ratio in the future.

In the first part of my article, I want to give you an impression of several parts of the fair. In the second part, I want to show you some of the artists that were present there and the comics and artwork I bought from them. The area where independent artists showed their work was significantly increased in size this year. In the third part, I want to show some amazing cosplayers. In the last part, I want to show you some impressions from the massive LEGO area.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

On 29 April, I finally managed to beat Getting over it with Bennet Foddy in under 10 minutes! After a good number of failed attempts with clear times just above 10 minutes, I eventually achieved a time of 8 min 30 sec 836 msec which would have placed me at position #481 at speedrun.com if I had recorded the run. Since then, I haven’t played Getting over it again since I just cannot do the advanced moves that are necessary for an even better time consistently.

The not listed runs didn’t result in better clear times:

• 1st run: 3h:59m:54s
• 2nd run: 1h:00m:50s
• 3rd run: 55m:47s
• 4th run: 49m:34s
• 5th run: 24m:22s
• 6th run: 18m:06s
• 8th run: 17m:47s
• 9th run: 16m:00s
• 11th run: 15m:05s
• 12th run: 14m:30s
• 13h run: 14m:03s
• 14th run: 12m:26s
• 16th run: 11m:25s
• 18th run: 10m:37s
• 20th run: 10m:06s
• 28th run: 8m:30s:836ms

I have just uploaded slightly adjusted versions  of the following pages to make the course of action clearer:

• The Way Back Home 116: The captain Reginar now gives an order in the last panel to kill all guards under Eldor’s command to minimize the risk for his men.
• The Way Back Home 120: Alissa now only mentions Salena to follow them in a minute in the 3rd panel.
• The Way Back Home 121: The magic effect that allows the swords to cut through the elves’ armor in the 2nd and 3rd panel has been highlighted.

Yesterday, I had a really good run in Getting Over It (see my last post about the game):

• 1st run: 3h:59m:54s
• 2nd run: 1h:00m:50s
• 3rd run: 55m:47s
• 4th run: 49m:34s
• 5th run: 24m:22s
• …?
• World record, here I come! 😉

Sometimes old geezers like me have to prove that we still have it. So I accepted the challenge and finished the ridiculously hard PC game Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, and with a pretty good completion time of 1:00:50 h.

Getting Over It is a short game that can theoretically be completed in just a few minutes, but it is ridiculously hard since it requires extremely precise mouse input. And if you fall at one obstacle the wrong way, you may fall all the way back to the starting position. There are lots of funny videos on YouTube of Let’s Players who scream and cry like little children due to their frustration when playing the game:

• PewDiePie’s journey into insanity
• Markiplier’s descent into rage-fuelled madness
• Gamers’ reactions to falling down at “Orange Hell”

All in all, the game is so hard that only 4.5% of all Steam users have managed to complete it.

That was my second attempt after achieving a completion time of 3:59:54 h on the first try. I initially just wanted to show my mother how to play the game at the start of the 1 h run, but then I managed to get to the area with the anvil without any severe error. Too bad that I struggled immensely to get past the anvil area and ruined a good chance of a sub 30 minute run. Afterwards, I was a bit salty about missing a sub 1 hour run by just a minute and tried several times to beat my record. Well, let’s say the game mercilessly punished me with fall after fall for this act of hybris. I really should have known better… 😉