This thread is here to briefly explain the general rules of the leaderboards. Do not consider this thread as a fully comprehensive for rules across all of our leaderboards. ALWAYS look at the rules for the individual leaderboards that you intend to submit to. If you have any questions, please refer to our mod team. We are most easily found in the Sonic Speedrunning Discord (linked in the game bar). This game has its own channel in that Discord. Please also check the Guides and Resources sections for more info.
Timing All boards are sorted by RTA. Time Starts when you select "Start" on the main menu and ends when the screen fades out on the final split (detailed below in the Categories).
IGT is completely optional and does not contribute to sorting but acts merely as a secondary metric to compare. IGT can only be tracked via an AutoSplitter or by manual calculation, as this game does not display the In-Game Time anywhere except for the results screen. The time displayed on the results screen doesn't include time lost from Deaths, so any death requires manual calculation if an autosplitter is not used. IGT does not include time spent in Special Stages.
Categories The 2 categories for this game are "Beat The Game" (effectively Any%) and "Best Ending" (effectively 100%). Beat the Game requires no Chaos Emeralds and ends when you finish Panic Puppet 3. Best Ending requires collecting all 7 Chaos Emeralds and ends when you finish The Final Fight. Both categories ban the use of any Level Select or Level Skip features.
Each category is separated into 3 platform-specific sub categories. These are Genesis, Saturn, and Windows. The primary difference between the platforms are loading time discrepancies and Special Stages. The Saturn version is only for the version played on the Sega Saturn, uses updated and more detailed sprites, has a fully polygonal Sonic model in Special Stages, and has by far the longest loading times. Windows only includes the version released for Windows PC in 1998, which uses the same sprites as the Saturn version for the stages. The Genesis version is for every other release of the game, spanning from the original Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, through the various Collections on Gamecube, Switch, PS2, PS3, PS4, XBox, XBox 360, XBox One, and even the Collections made available via Mega Collection Plus and Classics Collection via Steam on PC. The general rule is if it's not the Saturn version, and it doesn't look like the Saturn version, it's the Genesis Version.
Emulators The unoffical emulators that we allow on the leaderboards are Regen, Kega Fusion, Genesis Plus GX (standalone or through Retroarch). For runs using emulators, the game must be visibly reset before a run. When using Retroarch, this reset must return to Retroarch's menu to display the core being used. Any use of a savestate after boot voids the run. No other unofficial emulator will be accepted. Allowed emulators are determined by their accuracy in emulating the games to keep them as close to the original game played on console hardware as possible. SaveStates are not allowed to be used in any runs.
ROMHacks ROMHacks will not be included on this leaderboard. This doesn't mean they're not supported, however. They're to be relegated to their own boards on a different page. Links for those boards can be found here.
Sonic 3D: No Flickies https://www.speedrun.com/Sonic_3D_No_Flickies This ROMHack is overall similar to the base game but lacks the requirement of gathering Flickies through each stage. As such, each stage is a direct run from start to finish as opposed to including scavenger hunts along the way.
We've had some questions regarding the Director's Cut of this game, a ROMHack made by the original game's director Jon Burton. We're looking into the possibly of giving it a leaderboard of its own. If that happens, we will update this post to include a link.
