https://twitter.com/SonicSpeedrunCo/status/1289326558902013952

Reposting here for those who might not be in the discord etc:

The Sonic Speedrun Community is Presenting Sonic 3: AIR as our next Tournament!

This Tournament will run from Friday Sept 25 - Sunday Sept 27, 8am to 8pm EDT

Full announcement: https://bit.ly/313us1F

Signups: https://bit.ly/39GPIOB

Quickstart Guide: https://bit.ly/2D00GD6

Just a note, as the Sonic mods are adding Best Ending to the games/categories where it's relevant; I have made the following changes:

S&K

• Made a subcategory containing Beat the Game, and All Emeralds. (was already done on S3). S3K
• Opened up the Beat the Game/All Emeralds Subcategory to all Main Categories.
• Moved NG+ into that Sub Category List (as it meant NG+ had "Beat the Game" and "All Emeralds" within it, which didn't make sense)
• Edited the NG+ runs to now use the Sonic Alone/S+T variable as appropriate.
• Moved Co-op out of Misc (as it was now lonely there, and the name was short enough).

Means that now you can submit All Emeralds and NG+ runs for the Tails, Knuckles and Co-op categories.

Let me know if you spot anything off about rules, or runs on the wrong place.

You can find the following over here: https://www.speedrun.com/classic_sonic_extensions#S3K

• Beat the Game Glitchless
• All Emeralds Glitchless
• NG+ Glitchless

Along with a few other categories as well.

As there are more runners using emulator now (including me), and the rules are somewhat dated I thought I'd put forth some suggestions for the rules that bring them to more "modern day" standards. Feel free to discuss, berate etc. :D

Emulators: Allow recent emulators, but just ban the use of Input Playback/"Movie" capabilities.

For proof of not using input playback, have a rule for showing something distinct about the emulator in use that doesn't have those capabilities (e.g. Retroarch's XMB menu,or the yellow "Reset" text), OR recommending the use of something like gamepadviewer (or Retroarch has an albeit crappy one built in), so real-time inputs can be seen - technically, this could allow emulators like Bizhawk still to be used. Obviously Bizhawk and others with input playback with an input display wouldn't suffice though so a separate display should be used.

Ditch the hard reset rule, as far as I'm aware this was for input playback emulators so they are shown as starting afresh, with the above this should be unnecessary and has parity between console and emulator.

Motivation for these:

1. There are a few emulators out there now that are cycle accurate, and even down to emulating the CRAM dots (the noise at the bottom of the screen in s3k) - telling the difference between these and a real genesis capture would be close to impossible. Having "hoops" for emulator users to jump through might just mean someone would opt for declaring they play on real hardware to avoid those hoops entirely.
2. Using input playback and having it shown on gamepadviewer is going to be almost impossible to achieve. Having a TASBot playback on real hardware would probably be an easier option :P
3. Bizhawk uses Genesis Plus GX, which is allowed, but technically has the same features that got Gens banned.

Another rule that probably should be clarified is the save file rule - allowing starting saves that haven't completed Angel Island. Which is technically already allowed given Chronoon's PB, and is a nice small QoL improvement when running the game, given how a lot of runners will reset in AI, and it doesn't seem to affect the CN2 ceiling either.

I like playing around with the glitches on emulator - but by no means am I anywhere near the caliber of the runners of the game.

Case in point: I couldn't get Mike's FB1 AsIntended tutorial to work, don't know if I was misunderstanding or the level select was screwing with the pause buffering - or my 36 year old hands just couldn't pause quick enough even with 50% speed in the emu.

Anyway with some extra hints from Lake, I decided to see if I could do it without Pause Buffering (seemed fairly logical to me - just pressing right when you're supposed to pause), and I got it to work, and it seems pretty consistent. Have uploaded a video of me doing it a few times without pause buffering - with the inputs on screen and hand cam:

I think the key here is (going by Lake's reaction in his stream to me saying about it), is that I hold A for the duration of the tube. But not sure, as I can't do the pause buffer strat to compare :P

Hope this helps :)