If you like to watch video games on YouTube or other platforms, you may have come across the term "Tool-assisted Speedrun" or the abbreviation "TAS". Many call it cheating and others look at it enthusiastically. I would like to clarify how and with what intention such videos are made.

What is a Tool-assisted Speedrun?

A tool-assisted Speedrun is a video about playing a video game in the fastest possible way. However, the gameplay was not recorded as usual in real time, but due to technical aids in extreme slow motion with thousands of savestates. Because of the tools, you can assign desired key entries to each individual frame.

The result is therefore far superior to the normal gameplay, as a person in real time would never get such a responsive.

Why would someone record or watch such a Tool-assisted Speedrun?

First and foremost, it's about entertainment and pushing the game to its technical limit. Of course, it does not fit the original sense of the game, but have you never had a perfect run and enjoyed it? Here the impeccable works. Basically, you can compare that to a huge domino where you can see it, however little by little, without a single mistake.

Contrary to some opinions, the creation of a TAS is not intended to indicate the alleged own performance, but to find out the technical limits of the game. In the course of a recording bugs often arise within the game, which previously appeared unknown or occurred only by chance. Thanks to the more precise input, the coincidences can now be intentionally used. Cheats are not recognized in a TAS.

How does the recording work?

Basically, anyone who has basic knowledge of the game and has enough stamina and patience to perfect the shot. Absolutely necessary for recording is an emulator with specific tools. Each TAS needs a special emulator for this purpose, which just has functions to record such a video frame by frame. Unfortunately, this also limits the platforms on which games can be recorded in this way. If there is no suitable emulator, you can not record a TAS. Therefore mostly retro games are used for it.

These emulators provide the ability to pause the game and only move forward by one frame on keystroke. This is called Frame Advance. At the same time you hold the keys that are to be activated during the frame and the frame is recorded. If you do that 60 times, you have recorded one second.

That alone is not enough. Because despite the low speed, tons of errors happen. You jump too early or miss a shot for example. Therefore is the function of re-recording. You work with several savestates and save the game as often as possible. The emulator will adjust the video to the memory levels since the memory level contains the entire game at that time. If you record for a second and notice that this second was not optimal, you load the last memory point and continue recording. Thanks to the re-recording, the recording overwrites the memory accordingly. You can correct so many times and the video at the end remains still flowing and the failed attempts are not recorded.

The result

At the end of the recording you get a file that stores all keystrokes per frame. With this file you can now play the result on the emulator at any time or export the video within the emulator to upload it to YouTube.

Timing differs from classic speedruns, which are recorded in real time. A TAS is calculated from the first frame after power-on to the last input. Therefore, the times are not always necessarily comparable to those of normal speedruns which only measure the playing time.

Examples and links

If you are interested in watching some of these videos, the TASVideos YouTube channel is recommended. TASVideos also maintain a site including a forum, where many members discuss the latest methods in order to further break existing records.

TASVideos.org
YouTube Kanal
Emulatoren

One of the most famous games: Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo NES:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siYert4HOSo

Due to the fact that the game itself is not recorded, but only the key input, it can also be the most absurd results. In some cases, several games are handled together with the exact same key input:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoThCyif9Oc

But even for a little newer consoles, there are some games thanks to the existing emulator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj18LFpUCRE