The VAT started on December 11, 2020 as a cooperative between -White and TritoBandito to assemble VOCALOID mappers into one place.
At the time, VOCALOID was difficult to push into the ranked section, as few Nominators were actively ranking these maps. Besides Noffy and Neonat, there were no other notable VOCALOID nominators.
The VAT sought to change that by helping mappers find guest difficulties, collaborators, hitsounders, and storyboarders for their sets. It also sought to provide a place for experienced mappers to help up-and-coming VOCALOID mappers.
These initiatives initially were unsuccessful, and it wasn't until approximately sometime in 2022 that things truly began to get moving.
On July 1, 2022, -White launched the first Vocaloid Mapping Contest, a.k.a. the VMC (at the time it was called the Vocaloid Mapping Competition). The main concept driving this contest was how it would be judged: This was no ordinary judging panel for an ordinary contest, but rather a collection of some of the most prominent VOCALOID mappers and modders in the community that were going to be providing feedback to every entry, and choosing the best VOCALOID map as the winner. This is a common thread across every VMC. Later, this contest was renamed to VMC#0 as it, in comparison, felt more like a prototype for what came next.
Approximately one year later, on May 3, 2023, -White launched the Vocaloid Mapping Contest #1. This garnered intense participation from new and experienced mappers alike, with a whopping 39 entries submitted (though ~3 were disqualified).
There were two main appeals to this contest:
A selection of Featured Artist songs were chosen
One of the most legendary VOCALOID mappers, tutuhaha, who was inactive for years prior, was a guest judge on the contest.
Of course, it also featured all the other things that one would expect from a premium contest, including osu! supporter prizes, Elite Mapper Points, and a badge for the winner. Just like every VMC, it was judged by VOCALOID mappers and extensive feedback was given for each entry. However, this iteration was not without it's flaws, suffering from inconsistent feedback quality between all judges, which the community rightfully complained about, as well as a lack of support for the mini-games (taiko, mania, catch).
-White was not going to stop here, and sought to make the next one bigger and better in every way. To do this, -White recruited a legendary VOCALOID producer, iroha(sasaki), as a Featured Artist. Using their songs (except Meltdown, which had already been mapped many times), the Vocaloid Mapping Contest #2 was born on January 28th, 2024. However, -White wasn't satisfied with just iroha(sasaki) participating in the contest, so he recruited one of the most famous osu! mappers in the game, NatsumeRin, which most people thought had completely cut off contact with the osu! community, on as a guest judge. This contest also featured full support for every gamemode, including a full judge panel, results livestream with judge commentary, Elite Mapper Points, badges, and more.
In March of 2024, -White, along with Noffy and Nyxa, started the VAT!cast, a live osu! talkshow that usually featured a special guest. The first episode aired on March 3, 2024, but as a result of the hosts becoming extremely busy, the show was paused for several months. It finally resumed in August that same year with the second episode. Starting from the third episode, Halfslashed was recruited as a 4th member of the VAT!cast to enable more flexibility in scheduling, and has appeared on every episode since.
The VAT!cast has aired approximately 1 episode a month since it resumed. You can watch all the episodes by heading over to our YouTube playlist!