First Stage

Intro
One hundred participants are given the opportunity to attempt the First Stage (stylized 1ST STAGE, later 1st STAGE), a course which primarily tests one's speed. The object is to hit the buzzer at the end of the course before the allotted time expires. If a competitor goes out of bounds or comes into contact with the water in any of the pits below the course, he or she is disqualified.

As of the most current SASUKE tournament, being SASUKE 39, there have been a total of 201 individual competitors that have ever cleared the First Stage, and a good number of them have cleared more than once. Among those competitors, they make up 498 First Stage clears in total across all 39 competitions.

Typically, 85 to 90 of the 100 original entrants are eliminated in this stage. However, in the 4th tournament, a record 37 of the original 100 competitors made it past the First Stage. After a kanzenseiha was achieved, (in SASUKE 4, 17, 24, 27, 31, 38) and also in SASUKE 12 after a near-kanzenseiha, the First Stage was thoroughly redesigned to be much more difficult and prevent large numbers of people from moving on.

A G4 special inside the making of SASUKE 18 revealed that the redesign of the first stage for that competition in particular was done with the intention of seeing all 100 challengers fail it. This did not happen, however, and that has only spurred the production team on to make this and all stages to follow even harder. That goal was almost met in the SASUKE 19, where much to everyone's surprise, only two competitors cleared the First Stage (neither of the two being SASUKE All-Stars), the least in SASUKE history.

In the first seventeen SASUKE competitions, the time limit of the stage ranged from 60 seconds to 103 seconds, requiring competitors to attempt the course at a quick pace, with the obstacle count going from 8 in the first two tournaments, to 7 for every tournament up to SASUKE 13, whereupon the count went back up to 8, before going up to 9 in SASUKE 14, a number that would stay consistent up until SASUKE 28.

Starting from SASUKE 18, the tournament after Nagano Makoto's kanzenseiha and the start of the Shin-SASUKE era, to SASUKE 27, the final tournament of SASUKE to be broadcast by Monster9, the time limit would remain higher than 100 seconds, with the highest being 130 seconds in SASUKE 18 and 26 and the lowest being 115 seconds in SASUKE 19 and 25, due to the obstacles themselves changing to become more demanding or complex in design, requiring more time to complete them. Likewise, the run-ups to each obstacle became longer as well, contributing to the increase length of the First Stage.

Following the second kanzenseiha of Urushihara Yuuji, in the SASUKE RISING era, the First Stage would be designed to be a speed course once again, as the time limit decreased to 105 seconds and the obstacle count reduced to 7. However, with the debut of the Tackle in SASUKE 31, the time limit was increased once again due to the difficulty of this obstacle, which had increased the count back up to 8. SASUKE 32 would see the count return to 9, which would remain for the next two tournaments, along with the Shin-SASUKE time limits, ranging from 115-128.

In SASUKE 35, the Stage was moderately modified, with the time limit being drastically reduced to 85 seconds (38 seconds less than the previous tournament), making it the first tournament since SASUKE 17 that the First Stage's time limit was below 100 seconds (coincidentally, that tournament also carried an 85-second time limit for the First Stage) and the lowest in any tournament since Shin-SASUKE and SASUKE RISING's era, due to the introduction of the Dragon Glider.

TBS Obstacle Names
+ - This obstacle leads directly into the next, without any break.

Challenge Obstacle Names
+ - This obstacle is an immediate successor to the previous obstacle, without any way to recuperate between them. NOTE: The Tarzan Jump and Rope Ladder in the 18th SASUKE are, on G4, referred to as the Tarzan Rope. All later competitons they are known as the Final Climb.