probably if we had an emulators section I think this game would have a lot more runners considering how hard it must be to find a copy of the game and also have one of those old consoles

Currently we have a soft allowing of emulators in the form of these rules for the No Warps and Glitchless categories:

• No Warps Runs that are under 25 minutes long RTA require video evidence.
• Glitchless Runs that are under 30 minutes long RTA require video evidence.

The idea here is to allow someone to try the game out on emulator, then once they get a decent time, choose if they want to invest in the equipment to needed for playing on hardware with video evidence.

While initially the emulator ban was in place mainly to limit potential cheating by use of TASing tools, we now know that the game is rather sensitive to changes in hardware performance and data access. The game can load stages and cutscenes faster or slower than official hardware depending on the type of emulation. The frames per second could change as well as the rate that buttons can be pressed resulting in gameplay not normally possible. So to keep things as fair and equal as possible, we have stuck with only allowing official means of playing the game. If in the future we find a means of accounting for all of these differences and problems, we can discuss changing the rules.

As for finding the physical game and equipment to play it, I guess that would depend on where you live and how much income you have to spend. At least here in the U.S. (as of this post), You can get a Wii system and the game for under $100 if you find the right deals on eBay. Understandably, that's not always the case depending on where you live as things could be more expensive. For video recording a good quality webcam is plenty fine. In fact we had WRs with webcam quality video before.

I hope this makes things more clear.

I do understand that you would like to keep it as official as possible however if there were an entire platform category for Emulator that would solve everything. There would be no opportunities for things such as cheating as it would all be within it's own platform. I would love to Run this game as do many people I know so if there is some way you could reconsider allowing emulators fully as their own category.

i understand that there are inconsistencies with the emulation and original hardware for shadow the hedgehog, but i do believe having it's own category for the emulation can solve the issue for the people who just wanna run the game and don't have the equipment to do so to run the game, there can be verifiers for that specific category who can only verify the runs for the emulated game like how y'all do with the og hardware runs and have them there for the emulated only category for sth 2005 (and im specifically talking about every run category that are and are not allowed on this one rn)

(psst, expert mode tournament with emulators allowed on the way, pass it on)

It's good to hear there's more interest in learning the game. Although I don't currently have anything more to share regarding Emulated Runs on SRC, I would still like to encourage anyone to interested to start running the game on emulator anyways to see if it's really is a game you want to run. Unless you were already planning to buy the hardware, there's no point in doing so if you don't like the speedrun. I would recommend doing that for any game you are interested in running.

If you haven't yet, you should also join the Sonic Speedrun Discord (link above) which has a channel just for talking about Shadow Speedruns so you can ask questions and discuss them with other runners.

As CFood has mentioned, Community Events can set their own rules and will likely allow Emulator Runs if that is something that interests you.

To revive this thread, BlazinZzetti recently released a mod for Shadow the Hedgehog called Shadow SX. And with that, he is currently in the works for a new website and new leaderboards specifically designed for Shadow speedrunning, and the current plan is for emulator runs to be allowed and (most of the time) comparable to console times with the Shadow SX mod. While this leaderboard is not up yet, people are already doing runs with this mod and posting times in our discord. So, if you want an option to run the game on emulator, check out the Shadow SX mod, and join our discord!

Shadow SX: https://www.shadowspeedrun.com/ShadowSX/

I have a quick question: are emulators (specifically Dolphin 5.0) are allowed for IL runs? I am interested in submitting a few if possible. Thank you for your time and consideration, mods!

No. Per the game rules:

Runs must be completed on official hardware using official media. (i.e. Wii must use original GameCube disc)

Runs on emulator are banned. Runs not using fully official means of play are banned.

• Using Nintendon't on Wii or WiiU to play a ROM is banned.
• Using Nintendon't to run an official disc is also banned.

These rules apply for any run of this game on SRC.

If you are planning to play this game on emulator, I would recommend following the link Azurillkirby posted to set up Shadow SX. Also on that site, you can navigate to the leaderboards we are working on for Shadow SX which does allow emulator runs.

Just been talking to some people who potentially want to speedrun this. If you'd like an SRC board for Shadow SX under the Sonic Fan Games series let me know (I'm one of the super mods for the series). Would give greater visibility of the mod and allow for emulator runs to live on SRC.

@BlazinZzetti @SilverSonic (sorry for the pings, but I think it was kind of an important question)

Could emulator runs under 25/30 minutes long (depending on the category) be allowed ? I'd be interested in running the game, but it's just not a possibility for me to play the game on official hardware due to my current living conditions (for precision, I live in a 15 m² flat for my studies and I definitely don't have the place to put a console and a screen there with what I already have). And video is not even required for times that high, so it's not like legitimacy would be a huge concern (especially because these runs would end up at the bottom of the leaderboard anyway). It would also follow nicely the timegate conventions that games like Ratchet & Clank or Super Mario Sunshine already use.

Or, as some people said, make a separate subcategory for emulator runs which would make sure that the competition is fair on all sides, like some other games do (e.g. Rayman 3). I personally think this is the best solution, but the timegate one just seems logical to me since video proof isn't even required. Personally, I don't know if I'll get very good times, so I'm fine with there being a timegate.

@ILikeBaguette25 currently only ShadowSX or Shadow Reloaded have emulator support.

https://www.speedrun.com/ShadowSX

https://www.speedrun.com/shadowreloaded

If you join the discord there's more info about this.

@dreamsyntax I'm aware of this, that's precisely why I'm reviving this thread. I don't think that banning emulator runs for the main game altogether is a good thing, nor is it fair to people who for some reason can't or don't want to play on original hardware.

SX is basically identical to the vanilla version of the game, other than some tweaks to stuff like the in-game timer, or making it easier to toggle certain weapon unlocks for IL runs. If you want to do runs on Emulator, the SX version should be how you play it. Essentially, the SX leaderboard is the "separate subcategory for emulator" that you are asking for.

Was interested in learning this game but since there's no emulator option its a lot less accessible. Unfortunate that mods won't give it its own category but it is what it is. Wish I could have ran it.

We did give you the emulator option: The SX leaderboards.

the romhack is literally another game lol

Long story short, playing this game on emulator has too many inaccuraties to be equally competitive with console. And while yes a separate section could be made just for emulator, we instead set up the board for Shadow SX (Speedrunner's Cut) which does allow emulator, but also addresses a handful of annoyances with the moderation side of things. The main thing being the better tracking of the in game timer. The romhack is rather easy to install, so I don't feel its that unreasonable to request the use of it. I welcome more discussion on this topic in our discord where our community resides. I will now be locking this thread. If rules change in the future, you will see so in the announcements.