Hi! This post is gonna outline a split made on the Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak Leaderboards regarding Emulators.

Emulators and Console have been split into seperate subcategories. No runs will be erased, existing runs will not be hidden, and you can continue to run on emulators if you like, however they will not be under the same leaderboard subcategory going forward.

Here is the reasoning behind this decision: Part 1: Why modify how emulators are shown?

1. It is unfair to console runners that inaccurate emulators are allowed. This is because console runners can't benefit from an emulation inaccuracies that exist on older emulators.
2. Emulators in general can have way easier control schemes. My PB, which is the EMU WR, has much easier mashing thanks to the use of a keyboard instead of a controller. While the best mashing is possible, it is not as easy on console.

Part 2: Why not hide emulator runs, or perhaps only allow the most accurate emus and purge the rest?

1. Purging the more inaccurate runs would be unfair to the majority of the runners, considering there are less console runs than emu, and it is difficult to gauge the emulator many of these existing runs.
2. Hiding all emulator runs would be unfair to those on more accurate emulators, and overall definitely not preferable for the community, as hidden runs with no visible subcategory toggle tend to get ignored.

With that out of the way, the change is essentially this:

A subcategory based on hardware has been created. Official hardware (Ex. GBA, DS, Gameboy Player) goes in Official, while Emulators go in Emulator. All existing runs marked as emulator by the user have been moved into the Emulator section, and console is visible by default.

However, this is not the end of this change, which is where i'll ask you to help out: if you notice a run in the wrong category because the user marked it wrong, please tell a mod. The method used to sort them has room for error, and I wouldn't be surprised if some were missed.

In addition, in the future we are considering establishing rules for a specific emulator and allowing it to be in the "Official" category (at which point the categories would be renamed) so input would be appreciated from the both categories of players about opinions on this idea, allowing inaccurate emulators to remain seperate but the accurate emulator would be allowed with console runs.