How to Read TAS Movie Titles and Metadata on TASVideos

A TASVideos publication title packs the essentials into one line: a publication number, the platform, the game, the goal or category, the author(s), and the completion time. Once you know the pattern, you can judge what a movie covers before opening it. The format below is drawn from the site's own publication listings, such as [7288] N64 Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards "all shards" by 0xwas in 1:02:45.383.

The standard title pattern

Most entries follow this order:

[number] Platform Game "category" by Author in H:MM:SS.mmm

Not every field appears every time. A movie with no special goal may omit the quoted category, and a title with multiple authors lists them together (for example, by LukeSaward & hyasynthesized).

Publication number

The bracketed number, like [7288] or [7302], is the publication ID. It is the site's permanent handle for that movie, so it is the most reliable thing to search or cite. Higher numbers are generally more recent publications, which makes the number useful for judging whether you are looking at an older or newer run.

Platform

The platform tag tells you what the game actually runs on, not the game's original console generation in every case. Examples from the site's listings:

Platform matters because it sets expectations for the kind of tricks you will see. A GBC run and a PC run of the same franchise can look nothing alike.

Game name

This is the plain title, sometimes with a subtitle after a colon, as in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Hack or modified versions are marked in the name itself, for example Rockman 2 MIN, which signals a ROM hack rather than the retail game.

Category or goal in quotes

A quoted phrase describes the route or ending the run aims for. It is the field newcomers most often misread, because it changes what "finished" means:

• "all shards" — a completionist goal, collecting every required item rather than reaching the credits by the shortest path.
• "Neutral ending" — a specific story ending, not necessarily the optimal or true one.
• "newgame+" — the run starts from a cleared or carried-over save state.

If the quotes are absent, assume the run targets the standard ending or the site's default goal for that game.

Author(s)

Names after by are the people who made the movie. Some authors publish repeatedly in one series, so a familiar name is a hint about style and reliability. Author notes, linked from the movie page, often explain the techniques, glitches, or optimizations used — the monthly recap on the site points readers to these notes for insight into how a run was built.

Completion time

The time after in is the movie's length, formatted as hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds, such as 1:02:45.383 or 01:11.142. This is the run duration, not real-world recording time. Comparing times across two publications of the same game and category is how improvements are measured; the recap notes one run improving on a previous publication by 43 seconds.

Reading a full example

Take [7295] NES Rockman 2 MIN by longbao in 27:17.320:

• [7295] — publication ID
• NES — runs on NES
• Rockman 2 MIN — a hack of Rockman 2
• no quoted category — standard goal
• longbao — author
• 27:17.320 — about 27 minutes

And [7302] PC Undertale "Neutral ending, newgame+" by LukeSaward & hyasynthesized in 34:46.483 adds a two-part category and two authors, showing how the same pattern stretches to cover more detail.

Where to go next

The site's welcome page and Newcomer Corner offer hand-picked recommended videos if you would rather watch before decoding titles. For browsing, the Latest Publications, Newest Submissions, and Newest User Files/WIPs sections each use this same labeling, so the reading skill transfers directly. Submissions and WIPs are not yet accepted publications, so treat their numbers and status differently from published movies.