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.
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!
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!
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!
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!
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 :)
