In no particular order...

DanteDoes - For being a good host partner and just being someone to talk to when I'm bored.

Pinggas - The other host partner, and an excellent one too. Thanks for also allowing me to host your McDonald's run. It was a lot of fun.

EpicDudeGuy - For agreeing to co-commentate my first run. Despite my run being disastrous, he managed to explain a lot of the tricks I didn't as well as some of the ins and outs of the game. Also thanks for your entertaining Warrior Within run.

The PoP Community - Not many of them were at this year's ESA, but thanks to their support it felt like they were in spirit #CheesiestSpeechEver

The Mafia Crew - For allowing me to take part in the many games of Mafia despite me being so bad at it.

Fuzzyness and 360Chrism - That Super Mario 64 relay was amazing. Thanks for hosting this and for guiding the many runners during the relay. That was the most fun I've had in a long time.

Liva - For the 2nd stream, which ran really smoothly from what I could see, as well as being helpful with setup for my Metal Gear 2 run.

Shrimp and Tyriounet - For the amazing My Summer Car run. That was incredibly entertaining and I feel I might have to buy the game now :D

The Skeletor Crew - For allowing me to chat to you despite me not being active in your discord for about a year (sorry)

The Mario Kart: Double Dash Crew - For bringing your Gamecubes and your copies of Mario Kart. 16 player Mario Kart was amazing and we definitely need to do it again!!! Special shoutouts to whoever brought the network adapters (sorry, I forgot your name)

RoboSparkle - For lending me your UK to Euro power adapter when I needed it for Metal Gear 2. I really appreciate that :D

Mash, Eidgod, Ladaur and Maral - For being there during my biggest goof as a host (Game breaking bugs, anyone?). Special thanks to Ladaur and Maral for being amazing host leaders who helped us out throughout the event.

The crowd at the finale - For supporting me as I (as Kyogre) took down the Elite 4 and entered the Pokemon Hall of Fame during EpicDudeGuy's run of Pokemon Sapphire. Also thanks to the donors for making that possible.

Matse007 - For hosting my Metal Gear 2 run and reading out the many Metal Gear related donations.

The ESA organisers - For putting together an amazing event. The stream was hugely improved from last year (more on the feedback thread when that appears) and the lineup was brilliant this year. I'm gonna be spending the next few weeks watching the runs I didn't catch.

And finally.....

All attendees - YOU made this possible! Whether you ran a game, helped out as a volunteer, put a mini-event together or just simply lurked, you helped shape ESA 17 to be the best it could be (and a huge improvement over ESA 16)

Special thanks also go to anyone I missed out. You guys are awesome too, and I can edit this post to include you too!

Welp, I've managed to fit my Gamecube, Mario Kart and controllers onto my hand luggage :D

PogChamp TWO DAYS PogChamp

I think I missed out on the last bowling thing, so sign me up for this :D

Sounds good, but I'm bringing the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 3.

I guess that gives us two options: more songs or all instruments?

If there's enough room in my suitcase, I could bring my Gamecube, two controllers and my PAL copy of Mario Kart Double Dash.

The problem would be making room, I'm already bringing two other consoles

Sign me up. I've only done a paintball once and it was loads of fun.

I can bring my Xbox 360 again this year. My dlc library is still massive. Hopefully I won't have to stay awake for 30 hours just to download the songs again ResidentSleeper

I can bring the three microphones as well and I have a midi adaptor if anyone brings a midi keyboard/drum kit

EDIT: if possible we should look for a different room this time. Rock Band gets noisy and some Mafia players complained about it. (they were probably all mafia)

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Oh nice, both of my games made it through. Schedule's looking pretty damn good! I also approve of kicking off the marathon this year :D

Small updates regarding my runs:

I ran both of my submitted games in ESA Germany (Runs here: and here: ) Both of them went really well and I hope to do even better at this ESA.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - This is the run I was dreading more due to my performance in previous marathons (ESA 15 and the Prince of Persia marathon), but this time I feel I've managed to pull off a good run. Still some improvements could be made (WR is still 5 minutes ahead of my current PB).

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake - So somehow during practice in ESA Germany I managed to beat my WR by around 13 seconds. Unfortunately I didn't record that, so I don't expect anyone to take my word for it (evidence in this tweet for anyone interested: https://twitter.com/FingersTehHand/status/850141764140900352 ). I've been consistently beating my estimate during practice (including the marathon run itself) so it can stay as is.

I've not had a chance to stream much due to having shoddy internet (moving house is fun), but I have been practicing a lot offline.

Right, back at home in front of my own computer, so I can give some more detailed feedback.

Venue: A very good choice of venue, and from what I've been told the owners were really supportive throughout. Right next to a pizza shop (and, for a crappy pizza shop it was actually decent) and close to the shopping centre/train station, so that was good. The streaming room was a good size (I'd say the perfect size for an event of this scale) and the practice room was a good spot too. I didn't use the kitchen at all, so I can't really say anything about that. Overall, good place.

As a runner: I had plenty of opportunities to practice Metal Gear 2 thanks to the abundance of CRTs, which was really helpful. There weren't a lot of opportunities to practice Prince of Persia since there weren't a lot of PCs and I didn't have a gaming laptop, but that's completely understandable considering how much PCs cost these days. When it came time to do the runs, setup went really smoothly for both of my games. The tech organizers were really helpful and made everything absolutely clear. My only real complaint was how close together my two runs were (I believe it was less than 3 hours apart between the end of my first run and the start of my second), and combined with the time of day (bloody night shifts) I felt it had a very slight effect on my 2nd run (thankfully both runs went really well, going under estimate).

As a host: Surprise! I had to host at the last minute to cover for someone. It was a 4am-8am shift so it was pretty quiet, but I did manage to catch some good runs as a result from that. Speaking of runs...

As a viewer: The runs were very hype (no surprises there, considering it's ESA)! A very good selection of games that showcase a variety of different games and playstyles. Whether the runs are glitchfests (like the Prince of Persia runs) or just simply a showcase of skill (Quake, F-Zero etc.), each of them were entertaining in their own right. Congrats to all the runners of ESA Germany!

Overall: ESA Germany was everything I would expect from an ESA, just on a smaller scale and also in Germany. Thanks to all the organizers for having me over, it's been a blast!

Hopefully I'll see you guys in ESA17 :D

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Desert Bus Kappa

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I just literally found out about this! PogChamp

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This was my 2nd time at ESA this year, and I can say that I enjoyed it a lot.

• Everyone was incredibly friendly, just like last year. I found that I was able to talk to more people this year than last year, partly because of Mafia but mainly because I felt less shy.

• The arena was the perfect location for an ESA. Loads of space for both a practice area and the stream itself in the main hall means I didn't miss out on many of the runs I wanted to catch (I did miss on some, more on that later). The giant controller room upstairs felt relaxing (despite me playing some of the least relaxing games there). Props to the Bumperball team for allowing us to play in one of the nearby stadiums.

• Speaking of which, the side events, multiplayer games and competitions throughout meant there was always something to do over there, There wasn't a single day where I felt I did absolutely nothing... almost.

• My run was an absolute trainwreck. That's a plus because people really enjoyed said trainwreck and I felt that if I actually did well then X-Men: Mojo World would have been a lot more boring to watch. Shoutouts to RoboSparkle for winning the race.

• I absolutely love the idea of interviewing runners after their run while the next run was being set up. GDQ should take notes.

• COUCHES EVERYWHERE!

• The location of the venue meant it was a wee bit too far from town. I only got to properly explore Vaxjo properly after the event was completely over. That's a moot point however because I personally felt that apart from the shops and food places there wasn't an awful lot to do in Vaxjo. Lovely town, though.

• B-hall wasn't used to its full potential. Did my Rock Band setup scare people off? (Great to see people playing Rock Band/Guitar Hero).

• My run was still an absolute trainwreck BibleThump

Eh, we can use a guitar controller to play keyboard songs. It just means no Pro Keys.

PogChamp