Hello everyone! Welcome to the second ever Competition Spotlight! I'm kierio04, and it's time for the review of all TAS competitions from May 2026.

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MKWii TAS Competition 2026 (Mario Kart Wii) Each year, this competition is broken up into "sets" of 5 official tasks. May saw the commencement of Set 2 2026.

• 3 May to 9 May: Task 6 2026: Slippery Slope (21 competitors, won by kierio04). This was a speed task, in which competitors were given 4 hours to create a TAS of custom track Compact Closed Pushy Penguins, a klein-bottle shaped course based on the Pushy Penguins gamemode from Mario Party 5. This was a very divisive task, with some people enjoying the chaos and others (including someone who had competed in every official task since late 2021) choosing to opt out of competing altogether. If you're paying attention, you'll notice that I won this task! It was my first solo task win since Task 6 2024 (which was also a speed task).
• 10 May to 30 May: Task 7 2026: Back in the City (25 competitors across 16 teams, won by kierio04 & Police). In this task, competitors were asked to complete a lap backwards on custom track Big Express City without any mushrooms or respawns; a challenge previously done in a series called "CTGP Backwards" by the task winners themselves. Rigged? Fitting victory? Or just inevitable...?

Want to join in? Check out the MKWii TAS Competition discord server!

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New SM64 TAS Competition (Super Mario 64) Coincidentally, SM64 is also in Set 2.

• 4 May to 16 May: Task 8: It Must Be a Sign (6 competitors, won by galoomba). Despite being a task allowing teams of 2, this was won by a solo competitor! That happens sometimes, and it either means it's a quiet task with less competitors than average or the solo competitor is just that good. Let's go with both. In this task, there were custom-placed boxes and signs throughout Wet-Dry World, and competitors had to interact with all of them before collecting the custom-placed star.
• 18 May to 30 May: Task 9: Road to the Stars (7 competitors, won by Kieran). Taking place on popular romhack Super Mario Star Road, this was the first romhack task since Task 9 2022. In this task, competitors started on the top of a tower and had to collect coins, goombas, and trees before dying to finish.

Want to join in? Check out the New SM64 TAS Competition discord server!

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Trackmania is absolutely winning in 2026 with multiple active competitions running concurrently. I didn't mention this but, in April, Trackmania passed Mario Kart Wii to become the game with the 2nd most TAS competitions ever held. As of writing this post, the standings are Super Mario 64 in 1st at 419, Trackmania in 2nd at 216, then Mario Kart Wii in 3rd at 163. TASmania (Trackmania Nations Forever) TASmania, the flagship competition, is consistently performing well with around 20 competitors every month!

• 2 May to 16 May: TASmania 30 (19 competitors, won by Rio)

Want to join in? Check out the TASmania discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! SpeedTAS Season 2 (Trackmania Nations Forever) Part of the reason for Trackmania's surge in total task numbers is the consistency of output at SpeedTAS, which hosts weekly speed tasks.

• 3 May: SpeedTAS 17 (11 competitors, won by Rio)
• 10 May: SpeedTAS 18 (14 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 17 May: SpeedTAS 19 (8 competitors, won by vogtek)
• 24 May: SpeedTAS 20 (11 competitors, won by Thoman)
• 31 May: SpeedTAS 21 (8 competitors, won by skycrafter)

Want to join in? Check out the SpeedTAS discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! Random TAS Comp (Trackmania Nations Forever) RTC is still going strong, with another 5 tasks in May!

• 3 May to 5 May: RTC 9 (3 competitors, won by Comfy_Ivy)
• 7 May to 10 May: RTC 10 (7 competitors, won by ingtuL)
• 14 May to 18 May: RTC 11 (12 competitors across 7 teams, won by skycrafter & Rio)
• 22 May to 24 May: RTC 12 (11 competitors, won by Comfy_Ivy)
• 27 May to 30 May: RTC 13 (9 competitors, won by Thoman)

Want to join in? Check out the RANDOM TAS COMP - RTC discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! LIC Competition (Trackmania Nations Forever) A new competition in May, which instead of aiming for fastest time, you aim for the lowest input count (LIC), i.e. the least number of unique input changes.

• 5 May to 11 May: LIC Competition #1 (7 competitors, won by Comfy_Ivy)
• 10 May to 17 May: LIC Competition #2 (2 competitors, won by Der_Kabeljau)
• 20 May to 24 May: LIC Competition #3 (3 competitors, won by Der_Kabeljau)
• 25 May to 31 May: LIC Competition #4 (5 competitors, won by Comfy_Ivy)

Want to join in? Check out the Trackmania Tool Assisted discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! UnitedTAS (Trackmania United Forever) Unfortunately, this experimental competition for the paid TMUF came to a close this month, with UnitedTAS #4 being the last edition.

• 1 May to 6 May: United TAS #4 (TMUF-X) (1 competitor, won by CA1EBYT)

TAS of the Day (Trackmania Nations Forever) Coming in as a huge shock is the introduction of the first ever daily TAS Competition in history.

• 7 May: LunaticBay (8 competitors, won by ArkesTM)
• 8 May: Marina (1 competitor, won by Thoman)
• 9 May: Marina XIV (2 competitors, won by charliethepig)
• 10 May: »Lunatix 14 (7 competitors, won by LittleD3m0 & skycrafter)
• 11 May: So Short # 082 (2 competitors, won by Thoman)
• 12 May: TMN Race B-5 (1 competitor, won by Rio)
• 13 May: I-2 (0 competitors)
• 14 May: Kackiest Kacky #412 (0 competitors)
• 15 May: S12 (7 competitors, won by Thoman)
• 16 May: S87 (2 competitors, won by Thoman)
• 17 May: Tropical Mini :) (2 competitors, won by Rio)
• 18 May: MM Lunatic 033 (4 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 19 May: Quic jump 13 (3 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 20 May: Polaris XIV (1 competitor, won by igntuL)
• 21 May: 222 - Khai-Muk (2 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 22 May: Jsut Hard Short | 11 (2 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 23 May: Kacky United D8 | Westie (2 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 24 May: ~ JUMP 57 ~ (6 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 25 May: [Speedracer] stupid LOL 42 (2 competitors, won by Bedeux)
• 26 May: Mini Hard Project #10 (3 competitors, won by Fabi)
• 27 May: A01-Race-Bubble (0 competitors)
• 28 May: xtrm Hard - 9 - S107 (2 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 29 May: Grass fun slider A2# (2 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 30 May: Uni-Hard 06 (2 competitors, won by LittleD3m0)
• 31 May: tracut #018 (1 competitor, won by ArkesTM)

Want to join in? Check out the Trackmania Tool Assisted discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange!

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That's it for May! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! If you're interested at all in seeing more of what these communities do, consider joining their competitions! Participation helps keep these things going. I look forward to writing again June!

We've discovered that the Commodore 64 core in BizHawk became non-deterministic since version 2.11: loading different savestates from the same timeline may lead to different results later on. So we recommend to use BizHawk 2.10 or older for C64 TASing, even though it's not yet known how many C64 configurations are affected.

Sometimes you add a single game tool that counts for 50 games! And this is one of those times. As of right now, CTAS movie files, developed with the CoffeeTools mod for UFO 50 are allowed for submission! This collection of games has a dedicated speedrunning and TASing scene we hope to see work on quite soon. Many thanks go to synabler, for raising awareness about the tool to staff; to our publishing team, for developing the publication process for PC games; and to Blazier and ToastGhost, main developers of CoffeeTools, for their support and for implementing changes to the format (such as including rerecords count and a timer in the file itself) to improve support on our end. Happy TASing!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first ever Competition Spotlight! I'm kierio04, the ambassador you haven't heard of before. Not to worry, you'll be hearing a lot from me over the months to come! This thread takes after ikuyo's Load State as I'm sure you guessed. However, instead of discussing what's been happening inside TASVideos, I'm going to be discussing what's been happening outside, specifically in the world of TAS competitions. Competitions are a huge passion of mine, and I thought it was about time I made it everyone else's too. So, without further ado, let's wind the clocks back one month and review April 2026. Throughout this post (and all future posts), you're going to see the words "task" and "competition" used an awful lot. To be clear from the beginning, a task is a single event with participants and a winner, and a competition is a series of tasks which together form a larger event.

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MKWii TAS Competition 2026 (Mario Kart Wii) This game means a good deal to me. I've been TASing it for 8 years, and have been running competitions in it for 6. So to counter any claims of favouritism, I'm letting you know that I'm putting it first by right of "it just so happened to be first alphabetically".

• 22 Mar to 4 Apr: April Fools Task 2026: On Mario Circuit... (23 competitors, won by marvus). This one started in March, but you if you squint enough you'll notice the words "April Fools", which to me scream April. There exists the concept of a speed task, where instead of having a long period of time (i.e. weeks) to create a TAS, you have a short period of time (i.e. hours) upon requesting to view the task. In this task, competitors were given a random amount of time between 20 minutes and 48 hours, and unaware of the fact that the time they got was different to anyone else!
• 5 Apr to 11 Apr: Task 4.6 2026: Ultra Unneeded Week of Waiting (16 competitors across 9 teams, won by 315C & AidanAR246 & Tactical). If you're at all familiar with Mario Kart Wii, you'll have heard of the ultra shortcut. In this task, competitors had a week to perform one on any original or custom track with an emphasis on entertainment, and were scored by a panel of judges in a livestream after the task ended.
• 12 Apr to 2 May: Task 5 2026: Part Three (28 competitors across 15 teams, won by Kawediloru & somebro & KaiMK). Third in a series of recurring tasks on custom track "Heart of China". In this task, competitors had three weeks to complete a scavenger hunt of objectives scattered across the course.

Want to join in? Check out the MKWii TAS Competition discord server!

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Jarometer Tasks (Red Ball) I was talking about the Red Ball TAS community the other day, and my favourite thing about it is that their go-to beginner TASing exercise is to tie one of the maxed ILs. That has absolutely nothing to do with the TAS competition, but I thought I'd share it. The Red Ball TAS Competition was incredibly active at one point, but burnout hit hard and it's currently in hiatus. However, jarometer stepped up and decided to run some one-off tasks of their own.

• 29 Mar to 5 Apr: TAS Competition 2 (5 competitors, won by Starline). In this task, competitors had 12 different levels to TAS. Each competitor would be ranked for each level, and the competitor with the most wins across all levels would win the task overall. Starline achieved tied or outright 1st place in all 12 levels.

Want to join in? Check out the Red Ball TAS Competition discord server!

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New SM64 TAS Competition (Super Mario 64) Ah the big one. If you exclude DTC, the many iterations of the SM64 TAS Competition together form the longest-running competition of any TAS community, with over 400 tasks spanning 19 years. Its most recent form being the New SM64 TAS Competition, founded in September 2025.

• 2 Apr to 25 Apr: April Fools Task 2026: A Fool's Lottery (8 competitors, won by asdasdv). With two TAS communities sharing the tradition of running an annual April Fools competition, one begins to ask who's been doing the copying. The answer is me, both times. I run both competitions. In this task, competitors were given 3 different rulesets, and it was up to them to do however many they liked in whichever order they wished. The catch was that when the task ended, one of the three rulesets would be randomly selected as the rules for the task, with the other two being voided. asdasdv, naturally, did the chosen ruleset and the chosen ruleset only, beating everyone who combined it with other rulesets or who were disqualified for not doing it at all.

Want to join in? Check out the New SM64 TAS Competition discord server!

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TASmania (Trackmania Nations Forever) Fans of individual level TASes will be rejoicing for having an official commitment to IL support and then three different IL-focused games mentioned today!! Trackmania has had an incredibly active month of competitions. TASmania is its most major competition, held monthly.

• 2 Apr to 16 Apr: TASmania 29 (26 competitors, won by igntuL)

Want to join in? Check out the TASmania discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! SpeedTAS Season 2 (Trackmania Nations Forever) SpeedTAS hosts weeky speed tasks, and currently holds the record for the highest-numbered task in a single competition, reaching 68 in the final edition of Season 1 in November before resetting the count for Season 2.

• 5 Apr: SpeedTAS 13 (4 competitors, won by Sneak)
• 12 Apr: SpeedTAS 14 (12 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 19 Apr: SpeedTAS 15 (15 competitors, won by Rio)
• 26 Apr: SpeedTAS 16 (14 competitors, won by igntuL)

Want to join in? Check out the SpeedTAS discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! Random TAS Comp (Trackmania Nations Forever) Random TAS Comp (a.k.a. RTC) only started in this past month and has already held 9 tasks as of writing this post. Incredible determination. I guess it's just a question of how long this will last... hopefully very!

• 8 Apr to 9 Apr: RTC 1 (5 competitors, won by CA1EBYT)
• 10 Apr to 11 Apr: RTC 2 (3 competitors, won by CA1EBYT)
• 12 Apr to 13 Apr: RTC 3 (4 competitors, won by charliethepig)
• 5 Apr to 17 Apr: RTC 4 (5 competitors, won by CA1EBYT)
• 19 Apr to 21 Apr: RTC 5 (5 competitors, won by LittleD3m0)
• 23 Apr to 25 Apr: RTC 6 (7 competitors, won by igntuL)
• 26 Apr to 27 Apr: RTC 7 (7 competitors, won by Rio)
• 28 Apr to 30 Apr: RTC 8 (5 competitors, won by Oogy749)

Want to join in? Check out the RANDOM TAS COMP - RTC discord server or sign up on the TM TAS Exchange! RTC but better (Trackmania Nations Forever) Even in hosting competitions, there's competition. Seems this was a short-lived speed task equivalent to RTC.

• 20 Apr: RTC but better (5 competitors, won by Kristiano)
• 20 Apr: RTC but better 2 (4 competitors, won by CA1EBYT)

Super Secret Competition (Trackmania Nations Forever) It's a secret... UnitedTAS (Trackmania United Forever) As best I understand it, this competition was set up to motivate people to create more TASes on TMUF (United) instead of TMNF (Nations). United is the full/paid equivalent to Nations, so it makes sense that activity there would be lower, however Celeste has proven that cost isn't really a limitation if the game is popular enough.

• 13 Apr to 16 Apr: United TAS #1 (6 competitors, won by ArkesTM)
• 16 Apr to 19 Apr: United TAS #2 (TMUF-X) (3 competitors, won by abyss)
• 16 Apr to 19 Apr: United TAS #2 (Nadeo) (0 competitors)
• 19 Apr to 22 Apr: United TAS #3 (Nadeo) (1 competitor, won by Ibozz91)
• 19 Apr to 22 Apr: United TAS #3 (TMUF-X) (1 competitor, won by DELETE_CLUB)
• 25 Apr to 30 Apr: United TAS #3 (0 competitors)

Want to join in? Sign up on the TM TAS Exchange!

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That's it for April! If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope I didn't bore you too much with the finer details. If you're interested at all in seeing more of what these communities do, consider joining their competitions! Participation helps keep these things going. I look forward to seeing all sorts of new competitions and results for May :)