Personally I am on team "Yes, with conditions".

First off, WRs need full evidence. Full emu window captured, proof it's not a TAS and only on an accurate emulator.
For other top times I still think you should provide full evidence, but if a trusted player (someone who's proven to be capable of WR times for example) sets a bunch of rank 10 times just to get times up on the board, I don't think video should be necessary personally. But if a random person comes in and sets top 10 times without any proof, that would be worth a proof call in the form of a stream preferably.

Can't really do black on white rules for this IMO. If someone seems suspicious, make them provide proof, but also have a degree of trust for people who've proven to be capable and trustworthy

 Definitely do not allow is my opinion. I hate that it's being allowed on speedrun.com and other sites already. I would never compete in a game that allows emulator times. It's so easy to cheat and get away with it on emulator.

I don't see what is wrong with allowing flash cards. If the argument is that the game is hard to find just allow flash carts similar to the other rare f-zero games like f-zero 2 and Expansion Kit. If you are serious about the game just play it on real hardware.

 Personally I'm all for allowing it

GBAs are somewhat rare over here, flash carts literally don't exist over here, neither the equipment to record GBA (and cap cards already cost a leg and an arm here), and I can't mod my Wii U because of a dumb reason, but said dumb reason is something that I've got no way to avoid. (trust me that shit almost cost me my school year to an extent, not gonna risk my Wii U) and there's definitely others with at least some of these problems

I myself would have started playing way earlier (around the start of last year) if Emu was allowed, and there are people who would run the game if Emu was allowed, but cant due to the game's rarity + one of the other things. 

I would like to see it be allowed. The game is rarely played as is, and it's only going to become less active as the years go by. If we want new people involved in our community, we should make it easier for these folks to participate - who I imagine these days barely even know what a Game Boy or a flash-cart is.

If people want to cheat, they will cheat. In fact you can already do that on the official emulators we allow on the site, or using other tools for real hardware in certain cases, and we can't ever say for sure that some of these times weren't unruly set.

We are, and should remain, a trust-based community. This means that as long as we aren't pretending to be able to fully control that every single time that is submitted to the site is done or has been done "legitimately", we should strive to make these very old and increasingly rare games as accessible to people as possible, and simply let people have fun playing and competing in them.

That of course doesn't mean we should be completely willy-nilly about it; we should still require proof, especially for top times. I also think we should still encourage people to get the "real stuff" once they are on the ladder and have committed themselves. After all, nothing can truly replicate the feeling playing the games the original way. And if you're not going for fast-laps, it should also give you a competitive edge as it has less input lag.

This trust-based focus is what I see should be in the DNA of this site, instead of it being old-guarded and limited for no good other than pretending that we are "better" than other communities that do allow emulators, and that we are standing on a legitimacy-highground compared to them, a highground that I think is an illusive one.

 as long as we got some conditions to keep track of emulator times, it should be doable.

experts in emulation have pointed out methods to limit possible cheating scenarios somewhat. we should at least consider those since, if we really get down to it, it's possible to cheat even with the current rules and allowed consoles if someone really put in the effort and time (though at that point that time would be better spent practicing the game but that's another story)

also, for now it will be just this one game. we could also ask every player who uses emulator to write it in their times so that people know who's using them and we can also make videos required for them (you're playing on a PC and there's a million software capable of screen recording. no excuses like people who don't have capture cards or Game Boy Players to not have videos even if the videos are just 240x160.)

 No.

This is a community which has been going almost 20 years with a strong sense of integrity. Allowing unofficial emulation will forever taint that.

The original F-Zero has been released on Wii, Wii U, SNES Mini and Switch. How many new players has that brought in? Hardly any. A handful of extra people might submit Climax times, it's not worth it.

If speedrun.com is allowing emulators and it's so great, make emulator charts over there and keep F-Zero Central clean.

Yes.

Brought this up so many times in the past it was always met with either unnecessary trolls or anti-emu moves. I can't belive how people still today can't understand how much of a damage not allowing emus in the ladder did to the franchise. You're talking about integrity? Please, that's such a ridicoulus statement. We've seen many games like Metroid and what not rise in player numbers and participiants not to mention with all the mods etc. holding the community close and tight to the franchise. I have attended a Super Metroid Tournament a year or more ago that had over 200 participiants and emulators were allowed. Does noone understand that giving accesibility to more people keeps games alive? You will lose absolutely nothing with accepting emu-players into the ladder.

Don't take this too personal but thanks for contributing to the franchises death with building an elitist circle around only console players, keeping the rest that would've loved to be on the ladder out.

 Emulation for F-Zero Climax has my complete support. If we're talking for speedrunning or setting times, then yes there should be formal conditions put in place. I would wager even maybe video or stream content should specifiy that the run is to be put on ladders, so as to not be confused for a random run on a track at any given point in time.

My reason for fully being behind emulation for F-Zero Climax is chiefly so that more people can discover F-Zero Climax (and the rest of the series, really). Barring people who run on emulator, some of which don't have much option to, really cuts down the player pool, which means we would technically be stagnating in terms of Climax players and that is something to avoid.

I agree completely

 I'd allow it. I want our community to grow and this is a big chance for it. It would be insanely hard to get a copy from Japan, especially due to the low amount of copies in the world. I would say that runs in the top 5 should require video evidence however.

Here's a draft of rules, which can be expanded upon later

- mGBA only. It's multiplatform, very accurate and doesn't have TASing features to worry about. Although we should only allow the PC versions (Windows, Mac and Linux) for now until other versions have proven to be accurate. TASing tools are planned way in the future but we can always disallow those versions as old versions stay available for download and the used version is mentioned in the title bar, which brings me to the next point
- Video proof must capture the entire emulator window, including the title bar which shows the FPS
- Video proof required for top 10? times. Personally I think top 10 is good, but this is still very much up for discussion
 

Of course the usual rules apply, no save states during the actual runs and no turbo/auto-fire.

I can provide a save file with everything unlocked for mGBA, so I feel like that makes it acceptable to make only mGBA allowed (for the time being)

If you have anything to add or other feedback, post your thoughts!

 I can agree here. This would add some proof about how the emulator runs Climax. The only thing is that most emulators won't stay at a consistent 60 fps, but I doubt that is too worrisome with mGBA. Doesn't dip that badly at all.

I say yes with conditions:

1. I would like to see any emulator times on the rankings marked as being done on emulator. Either have "All my runs are done on mGBA" as your comment on the first track, or comment on specific times you've done which were achieved on emulator. This way, whenever we manage to launch the new site (overview here), we can add the ability to filter runs by platform (console vs. emulator). This would allow anyone interested to view the rankings with just console runs, for example. And if any serious emulation inaccuracies or other issues are uncovered in the future, knowing which runs were done on emulator would let us take appropriate action.

2. We should provide a guide of some sort for anyone wanting to set up an emulator to compete. Maybe this can just be included as part of the rules, but if it gets a bit long, it could be a separate article. I would suggest including: which emulator and version to use (or where to download it), recommended settings, how to verify that you have a good dump of the game, some simple way to ensure that you don't accidentally have any cheats/mods activated (machine stats modding, etc.), and how to capture video for proof purposes.

3. Proof rules in Valyssa's post sound fine to me.

I'm with WMJ and Mandalore on this. Speedruns.com exists for emulator submissions already, with filters for Emu runs on the ladder, which we don't have. Flash carts for exotic games should be used.

I really don't like seeing Save Stated FLaps from Wii U VC as is and allowing emulation wouldn't make that issue any better.

edit: to clarify - my resistance stems mostly from the site not having a good way to properly tag a run/runner as emulator player

 Ban emu

 Alright, I have to post this from Alejandro on Reddit (yes there is a post there too, a lot of people dont have FZC accs cause they cant post times...have a guess why)

ther is another one if you want to see it

Absolutely not. I fear this will open the flood gates for other games to allow emu, like GX/X/SNES. This could potentially ruin the integrity of the rankings on the leaderboards, as emu's have TAS tools, and it could be difficult, if not impossible to tell whether or not slowdown was used to achieve a time. I refuse to achnowledge any time achieved with an emulator, let alone WRs set with an emulator. And I'd refuse to be on the same rankings as some dude who sets times with an emulator who has tools readily available like slowdown or frame advance. 

And don't even think about having something like 'allow emu times up to x rank'. That's like saying performance enhancement drugs are allowed in the olympics until you achieve a top 10 rank. or allowing something like Action Replay until a certain rank

I do consider VC 100% allowed as it's an official release by Nintendo, whereas GBA emulators are not (whatever gba emulators are called)

I do think emulators are a handy tool for developing strats or making theory tases, but they have no purpose to be on the same rankings as console players.

Also - hot take: Speedrunning is a hobby. If you're not willing to fork over some amount of money for your hobby, whether it's equipment like a console or capture card, or even a game, you should probably find a different hobby.  I forked over a good amount of money for 2 wiis, an extra copy of GX, and a capture card. And many others in this community have spent more money than I have to fuel their hobby.

idk I personally thinking allowing it is just to temporary relieve some people who won't ever bother playing the game for longer than a week after this hard decision to allow or disallow.  

It's been a while since the last reply. At this point I think people have had enough time to say their piece. I hope with this new ruleset all the concerns are addressed:

- The only allowed emulator as of right now is mGBA desktop version 0.8.x. If a new major version comes out it will first be investigated before being accepted.
- Video proof must capture the entire emulator window, including the title bar which shows the FPS and version number.
- Video proof is required for top 10 times and the video must be linked in the comments of your submission.
- The game must run at full speed at all times.
- You must include "mGBA [version]" in the comments of your submission.
 

And furthermore, instructions for setting up the emulator:
1. Download and install an allowed version of mGBA at https://mgba.io/downloads.html
2. By default all settings are correct, but ensure the following:
- Frameskip is set to 0
- Ensure cheats are disabled / there are no cheats loaded
- Do not bind autofire to prevent accidental use
3 (Optional). If you want to use an existing save data with everything unlocked, you can download the following file and place it in the same folder as your ROM with the same name as your ROM https://drive.google.com/file/d/16BbTwqw1vAPY2U8EUfa3ueQ0g-h2BJOz/view?usp=sharing

Once again, mGBA currently is a very accurate emulator without TASing tools that's available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Since the recording has to capture the entire window, it'll show if slowdown/save states/rewind is used so that can't be abused. Right now we can't properly label emu times, but on the new site that will be possible, so putting it in the comments for now will make it easy to label them properly in the future. This game will only keep increasing in price as time goes on; I got mine in box for like 60 euros 5 years ago, right now you're paying close to 100 euros for cart only and over 200 for in box (you don't need the box of course, but just to give an indication). Right now there's a bunch of people interested in submitting times, so I really hope we can come to a conclusion soon, because looking at the "latest times" page is quite depressing currently.