@ReddyLion and I work on comparing emulators and we have some interesting result to share. It's already known that emulator are faster than the console, but from the 2 tests we did, we found out the new BizHawk 2.10-rc1 with Genplus-gx is same speed or very close to the console

Test 1 - Intro & Demo

Start the game and let the intro and demo to roll out for 3 cycle:

• Frame 0 is the last frame the sword shot is in static position.
• Frame 1 is the first frame the screen starts scrolling.
• Last Frame when the 6th bag becomes a card in the clouds level, after after Mickey and Donald get hit by a tornado

Results

• Genesis 1 (model 1601): 19304 frames (5m 21s 733ms)
• Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx): 19301 frames (5m 21s 683ms) -> -0.050s
• Bizhawk 2.8 (Genplus-gx): 19288 frames (5m 21s 467ms) -0.266s
• Fusion 3.64: 19258 frames (5m 20s 967ms) -> -0.766s
• Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX): 19204 frames (5m 20s 067ms) -> -1.666s

Last boss with Donald without doing anything

• Frame 0: where all the columns are still aligned at the bottom, right before start moving.
• Frame 1: first frame you see far left column start rising.
• Last frame: after 4 minutes of fight, the first frame where Pete starts opening his right hand, the 2 ghosts are in the places pointed by the red arrows, and the columns are in the formation show in the image below.

Results

• Genesis 1 (model 1601): 14524 frames (4m 02s 067ms)
• Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx): 14524 frames (4m 02s 067ms) -> -0.000s
• Fusion 3.64: 14506 frames (4m 01s 767ms) -> -0.300s
• Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX): 14460 frames (4m 01s 000ms) -> -1.067s

• Bizhawk 2.10-rc1 (Genplus-gx) is the closest speed to the console.
• Retroarch (Genesis Plus GX) is the less accurate emulator, maybe something wasn't setup right?

Interesting results, i definitely noticed a huge improvement after switching to retroarch. Assuming this was all the same region? USA? Wondering if the genplus wide makes any difference aswell.

yes it was all tested with the same version (US).

Not sure what did you mean by "huge improvement", but the problem with retroarch it's faster than other emulators and that's a disadvantage for runners who plays on bizhawk or fusion.

For a full run, Retroarch would be 3 to 5 seconds faster than other emulator! Not sure if retroarch should be banned, but at least it should be discouraged, especially for top runs

I mean my runs were noticeably faster and I was hitting the tricks way more consistently. When i played on fusion id be sure i got the timing right for boosts but it still randomly wouldnt hit sometimes, didnt have that on retroarch.

You couldnt discourage it for top runners nobody at that level would play with that kind of disadvantage. If anything it should be encouraged over the other emulators. Console and emu are separate categories as they should be so i dont see the problem.

ok I see your point, would be good to hear opinions from other runners who plays this game on emulator. For instance @ZendoiKaban who also plays on retroarch, @Gutosur @Radar70 who plays on fusion, @just_tako who plays on Regen @Xanders08 who plays on Bizhaw

Personally I think it's better to choose an emulator which more accuracy

For first, i play on Kega Fusion, got my pb on 16:19 and hit the wall didnt understanding what i do wrong, but watch @inceptionkitten run and notice, that her run is much smoother, while i lose frames or drop fps, thats why i decided to change emulator to RetroArch (GPGX Core), and it emulate more smoother without droping frames,and immeately i got a WR paces, on same day get 16:10 PB and kept going rn, on fusion i dont think i could get better.maybe save like 3-4 seconds of my 16:19 time. Although, i watch Gutosur run, where he has much smoother emulation than mine on Kega Fusion, maybe he change something on settings and it get a advange,maybe im wrong if that so, im sorry

Emulator and console being split already solves most of the problems with differences between console and emulator runners. This was done because it's known that emulators run faster than hardware. The previous moderation team came to a conclusion on which emulators would be allowed moving forward, and those emulators (GPGX, Blast Em, and to a slightly lesser extent, Fusion) have been the standard for Genesis emulation for quite some time.

I am however not interested in banning front-ends like RetroArch over what amounts to a one second advantage. In my opinion, now that the secret is out, runners now know that RetroArch with the GPGX core is the fastest way to run the game, if you want to compete for a top time then use that combination.

There are other things to take into account aswell like the lag you can get while caping and the lag towards the end of the game, I'm pretty sure some emulators avoid that and that takes up at least 2 seconds.

To be honest, I'd hate myself for using the RA/GPGX combination because I believe it's the runner's responsibity to use the most accurate emulator available. If RetroArch/GPGX someday gets more accuracy updates, before that we might get these unbeatable world records that would require using an older version of the GPGX core.