Last week, the SM64 TASing Competition hosted its final results stream of 2018. Every two weeks for the entire year, a “task” was released to the public, to be completed by competitors with the fastest time possible. TASers generally had two weeks to independently work on this task, after which they would submit their finished TAS for final timing. Tasks range from simple goals like “collect three coins that have been manually placed” to more complicated goals like “get bingo on this bingo card of small goals“. The results of this bi-weekly competition have been streamed to 1ted59’s Twitch channel.
This competition is not new. In February of 2019, the TAS Competition will become 10 years old – and has been running almost continuously since it started. On the now-defunct sm64.org forums, JohannesSM64 began the competition with a task in Whomp’s Fortress that gathered five submissions. Compared to its sizable amount of regular competitors nowadays, perhaps five submissions seems meager. But for the size of the forum, five submissions was substantial. The competition was a community based event with various members hosting the event over time. Some of the participants of these early competitions are still active in the community today, such as SilentSlayers, Kyman, and sonicpacker.
The competition steadily grew from that point onward. The past year entertained over 130 participants with a per-task peak of 64 entries. Likewise, as the competition has grown, so have the participants themselves. Current moderators, mods, and participants were often those looking for guidance back on the SM64.org forums, fulfilling those roles themselves now.
The TASing Competition has added a new chapter to this historic competition by announcing that they would be partnering with the Global Speedrun Association (GSA) to host their reveal streams. GSA hosts a variety of competitions such as race/bingo tournaments and relays, so the TASing Competition fits in well with the Association.
The previous set concluded with MKDasher as the overall winner, CeeSZee in second, and Krithalith in third. For the most recent task, MKDasher and dar gos took first place. Congrats to the entire group!
If you have any interest in participating in the TASing Competition, competitors of all skill levels are welcome to join. The first task will be announced on January 1st. Here is a link to the Discord server.
In Other News
- dar gos set a new TAS world record for “Tricky Triangles,” breaking the record by 1 frame. This put the star 1 frame under 9 seconds, with a new time of 8″97.
- Yuramofu finished “The Tip Top of the Huge Island,” in 17″30, a new single-star RTA world record.
- Tama set a new single-star RTA world record for “Snowman’s Big Head” with a time of 8″51.
- ikori mario set a single-stage RTA world record for “Dire, Dire Docks” with a time of 6:08″20
- In the Speed TASing Competition, TASers had 1 hour to collect 1-ups in a lava-free Lethal Lava Land. MKDasher took first, Non5en5e took second, and Alexpalix1 took third.
- The freerunning competition was based around using a wing cap in Shifting Sand Land. dar gos took first place with his masterful flying abilities.
- Two separate Star Road freeruns were published, one by Rush57 and one by the duo of Non5en5e and Tomatobird8. Both are definitely worth a watch.
- Iwer Sonsch published a variety of TASes for the no-joystick/low-magnitude challenges; they can be seen here.
- In a GSA 70-star race, Puncayshun finished with a 48:08- a PB and a top 10 run all-time. Incredibly impressive given the race atmosphere during which this occurred.
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