I noticed something's amiss with the top ranked players in both Arcade and 30th Anniversary (A1Major, Kuerten, etc.). The gameplay from several of these videos moves much faster than the regular arcade does. Take Kuerten's 30th Anniversary SFA match against Birdie as an example where the first round beginning at approx. 1:07 in the video or just a few milliseconds before. By the time the video reaches 1:17 the in-game round time at the top of the screen has counted down to 85.
Now observe normal gameplay from the arcade version running on M.A.M.E. captured at 60fps. I'll use the match between Ken and Sodom here for my example, starting at 1:57 but any round 10 seconds or longer in duration will suffice. By the 2:07 mark the in-game timer reads 88. There's a huge discrepancy from these other top speedrunners and that's because, I strongly suspect, they're playing accelerated versions of the game. As someone who's currently at the top of the leaderboards in the Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 Xbox version of this game (6:26) I knew something was wrong when I watched these people play. You look at their footage, look at how lightning fast Birdie's jumps are and other characters moving way faster than they should, then compare them with the real thing.
The same holds true for A1Major in his Arcade (normal) speedrun. This round with Birdie begins at 1:39 but by 1:49 the in-game timer reads 86 which isn't possible during normal play. It should read 88.
Please look into this. Speedrunners using accelerated versions of the game to give themselves an unfair advantage should be considered cheating.
I should also add though, even though it is a coincedence in this case, you are correct about the 30th Anniversary runs. 30th anniversary runs on final burn emulation which is confirmed to run slightly faster, which is why it is in its own category. However the discrepency you noticed here is because we are all running on Turbo 2 which is a normal selectable option and allowed by our leaderboards.
By Turbo 2 you're referring to the dip switches if I'm not mistaken. For the rules for 30th Anniversary it says that the game speed must not exceed 3, whereas in the arcade rules it says speed/turbo may be freely adjusted. Thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 timed challenges are limited to the default settings, but game settings can be configured in regular arcade mode. Is this allowed for runs in the arcade category?
Yes, it is allowed. You are only required to set the difficulty and damage to the correct setting as per category, e.g. Normal = Normal Difficulty/ Normal Damage. All other settings can be anything you wish.
The default button is F2 in MAME to enter the service menu to change the options, and it is required to be shown either before or after the run, but must be within the same footage . (You can see this at the start of A1Major's run)
