I mean it's using the actual rom on the actual hardware so it's exactly the same right? Also when you're doing runs do you need to show the cheat menu is empty? I've never seen anybody do this, but the fact that it's there means it's something to be mindful of, I would assume.
How do people go about this?
some games allow flash carts some dont. if you are a mod it might be a good idea to look into how accurate the carts are and youll have to be mindful of the fact that despite being on a real console, a flash cart would allow a runner to use a modified rom.
is it considered real hardware? well its not emulation at least.
I've been meaning to investigate and you gave me the impetus. We could generalize everdrive to be a flash cart. It's not the same as real hardware but 99% of game communities don't care. Flash carts have slightly faster read/write speeds over the original 80s/90s/2000s chips. Flash carts are emulation when they emulate chips such as SNES Super FX and SA1. Yoshi's Island doesn't allow due to inaccurate Super FX v2 emulation. GB(C) flash carts can emulate quite a few chips. For games people actually play, problem is just Harvest Moon and Pokemon gen 2 real-time clocks. Harvest Moon allows.
I'm not sure what cheat menu you mean but I wouldn't bother showing unless it's a first speedrun submission to a hyper-competitive game.
Was hard to find games that ban flash carts. Not exhaustive and mostly N64:
- Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
- Stunt Race FX, also uses Super FX v2
- Star Fox 2, also uses Super FX v2 + had no official console release
- Super Mario 64
- Mario Kart 64
- Goldeneye
- Perfect Dark
- Pokemon Stadium
- Harvest Moon 64, flash carts are treated as emulator submissions, as in, not 100% accurate
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, allows with restrictions:
EverDrive is allowed. However, it must be on v2.5, v3, or x7 and run the rom via the auto-boot function. There is no cap. 64Drive is allowed. However, if you reach the world record within less than 1%, you must play on official hardware.
- Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal:
Flashcarts such as the Everdrive are not allowed for console runs. The only exception is running minihack categories on flashcarts with MBC3 RTC chips (such as this one from BennVenn), which is allowed, as there is no other console option. Fake/reproduction cartridges and/or consoles are banned.
These are hyper-competitive games. Most also explicitly ban reproduction carts. I'm sure one reason for the bans is ease in running modified ROMs that would be difficult to detect. Faster read/writes on flash cart could give different RNG in games where strategies are heavily dependent on it. I suppose SNES Doom and Winter Gold with Super FX v2 aren't competitive enough to ban or even start the discussion.
Love the in-depth answer my friend. Looks like most of the stuff I play will be fine.
Using the original ROM on actual hardware is essential for authentic speedruns. It's generally not required to show the cheat menu is empty unless specified by the game’s speedrunning rules. It's good practice to check the specific community guidelines, as video proof is often needed to confirm no cheats are used, and showing the cheat menu if necessary can help validate your run.
For most games the flash cart behaviour should be nearly identical to the cartridge with the same ROM. It should really be decided on a per-game basis whether the flash cart is valid for a run, but I think the large majority should be found to have no difference relevant to a speedrun.
The biggest source of difference is glitch exploits. Causing game errors can do stuff like access unexpected memory regions, or write to hardware in unexpected ways, where the flash cart might actually be different. In general, the flash cart replicates the hardware as best it can, but it's tested with "normal" gameplay, and there are often dark corners of the hardware behaviour that have not been reverse engineered or replicated. Most glitch exploits I've seen seem to work the same on flash carts, but if you find one that doesn't, that's a case where you might have to say it's invalid for this game.
The second biggest source of difference is expansion hardware inside the cartridge that the flash cart has to replicate. (On NES, things like MMC3 or MMC5. On SNES, the DSP games, Super FX, etc.) Generally these are replicated very faithfully for normal play, but there are obscure things about this kind of hardware that may not be researched yet or reproducible with the flash cart hardware, especially with the more complex ones.
Basically, by default I think you can assume it's identical, but just watch the run carefully and compare against real-cart runs. Pay special attention to glitches and make sure they match expectations.
If you're seriously competitive with a game, though, you might as well remove all doubt and get the cart. Flash carts are a functional replacement, but they'll never be guaranteed 100% the same.
As for modified ROMs, that's a trust issue I guess. You could show the ROM-hash in the everdrive menu maybe, but hashes can be faked. Honestly even the ROM on a real cart can be replaced, it's just more work and more difficult to do so. I think in most cases if someone was cheating that way, it has to be figured out by watching the run.