superSANIC: Firstly, I think you have a point with the issue being about proof, but I will have to disagree with you that screenshots is enough proof, especially for WRs if that's also what you meant with your statement. I think having the requirement to show video of your WRs is essential; not only because it's superior to screenshots when it comes to proving you did your times legitimally, but also because then people get to watch the times that's being set -- which in turn I think helps a lot with bringing new people into the scene (often providing they are of a certain quality as well). Screenshots might be sufficient for lesser records though, but at the same time I don't really think it's that neccessary for a player to show proof for those records anyway.

GX screenshots are especially suspect now that there's an active modding scene. There's currently no graphical distinction between, say, GX Unleashed and regular GX screenshots; and Nintendont makes it easy to play such mods on console as well as emulator. Videos make it possible to detect stat differences or other hacks.

Emulators should not be allowed for GX here on this website, mainly for the reason supersanic stated already. In lower levels of play, a slowdown may prove to be advantagous despite it being unpredictable. And if someone happens to run it on a shit PC running it at a constant FPS lower than 60, pretty sure that's a big advantage for players starting out. Even if a player can provide live recording while keeping the game running at 60 FPS at all times, while I can't back this statement up, I think allowing emulator would entice more players to use save states and playing the game frame by frame which is something we want to try to avoid as much as we can.

I don't like the idea of times set on emulator being ranked towards the GX AF/SRPR because there competition should be fair among everyone, so ban it all together instead of going through the trouble of labeling times as unofficial or somehow managing it to show up on the ladder but not have it impact a player's rank.

The concern regarding of finding out players who uses cheats or modifying the game itself isn't a big deal. It seems if you use the infinite energy cheat, the game straight up doesn't save the time and doesn't allow you to save the replay (not sure if this happens all the time though). The same may happen if cheats to up your speed were used. If the player can work around that using more hacks, then requesting for a video or replay data should seal the deal. Replaying a run that had machine stat alterations (Unleashed/GXtreme) will clearly be noticable if run on vanilla GX. And there is a way to view the machine's energy levels while playing a replay.

With regards to speedruns, while runs set on emulator can be submitted, it shouldn't be recognized as the official WR if it happens to be the best time. But with regards to flash carts, I think a WR time run on a flash cart should be official. While flash carts likely has faster loading times compared to running it off the GC/Wii, I have seen drastic differences between PAL and NTSC in loading times (not sure if it's the difference in console or the difference in ISO). Loading time differences would be minimized if it turns out that a PAL player running a flash cart version of the game is nearly the same/identical to a NTSC console running the game.

 So then, let's make USB loading/flash carts official for GX at least right now? No one is against it. And speeding up these decisions is kinda important for GX since it is fairly active.

 https://fzerocentral.org/viewtopic.php?p=102912

since the GX thing is more about USB loaders and not emulation, i made a separate topic over the GX forum.

it will also help map the rules for flashcarts for the other 5 games.