What Is TASVideos and What Can You Find There?

TASVideos (tasvideos.org) is a site that hosts tool-assisted game movies — videos of games played back through emulators with frame-by-frame precision, producing results a human playing live generally can't match. It's the place to go if you want to watch games beaten in ways that look superhuman, and to read the technical notes behind those runs. It is not a general gameplay-clip site: the content is built around tool-assisted speedruns (TASes), not live human play.

What "tool-assisted" actually means

A TAS is made by running a game in an emulator, where the author can pause, rewind, advance one frame at a time, and redo any input until it's optimal. The finished input sequence is then played back and recorded as a movie. The result is a run that shows what the game allows rather than what a person can execute in real time — perfect jumps, frame-perfect hits, and tricks that depend on exact timing.

That's the core difference from ordinary speedrun footage: a live run is a demonstration of human skill under real-time pressure, while a TAS is a demonstration of the game's mechanics under controlled, repeatable conditions.

What's on the site

The homepage is organized into a few clear areas:

• New around here? — a pointer to the welcome page and the "Newcomer Corner," which collects hand-picked recommended videos if you don't know where to start.
• Latest Publications — finished, accepted movies. These are the polished, verified runs.
• Newest Submissions — runs submitted for review but not yet published.
• Newest User Files/WIPs — works in progress and user-uploaded files, i.e. runs still being developed.
• Contribute — the entry point for people who want to submit their own work.

The catalog spans major franchises and many genres. The site's own description names Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon, and Final Fantasy, and notes coverage across adventure, platformer, puzzle, shooter, and sports games.

What a published movie looks like

Each publication is listed with its platform, game, category, author, and completion time. Recent examples from the site's monthly recap give a sense of the range:

Two things stand out. First, "category" matters — "all shards" and "Neutral ending, newgame+" describe what counts as finished, so two movies of the same game aren't directly comparable unless the goal matches. Second, authors often publish notes explaining their techniques; the recap specifically points readers to Walgrey's notes for the Ghosts 'n Goblins run. Those notes are usually where the interesting mechanical detail lives.

Why people watch

The appeal is usually one of these:

• Seeing the game's limits. Runs like the Rockman 2 MIN improvement (43 seconds faster than the previous publication, via several optimizations) show how much headroom remains in a game years after release.
• Learning the tech. Zips, clips, and movement tricks are documented in author notes and forum discussion, which is useful if you're into the game yourself.
• Completionist and oddball goals. A pinball game finished in 1:11 by finding one exploit in the table design is a different kind of satisfaction than a straight speedrun.

Getting started

If you're new, the fastest path is the welcome page and Newcomer Corner rather than browsing Latest Publications cold — the recommended list is curated for people with no TAS background. From there, pick a game you already know; the tricks read as far more impressive when you understand what the normal playthrough looks like. If you want to go deeper, the WIP and submission sections show runs before they're finished, and Contribute is where you'd start if you want to make one yourself.