Subcategories
First things first, I've split up console from emulators and all other versions including Steam, Virtual console, and the very recent Sega Classics Collection. Emulators have been found to have a few notable advantages over console including...
- Faster loading times during black screen transition
- Significantly reduced lag
- Inherently faster performance throughout the run (at least 60 frames saved on emu over console)
Given the point where the game is at right now, these differences do matter and thus the splitting into subcategories became a warranted decision.
Sadly banning certain emulators like Kega Fusion wouldn't work as further tests with Bizhawk turned up with even more jarring differences than Kega so we decided on splitting them was the way to go.
As for Virtual Console, Steam and the Sega Classics collection, they all play their retro games off an emulator so lobbing them together in the same subcategory made alot of sense.
Their are other versions including Xbox 360 and the PS3 version (both of which are gotten through buying from their online stores). We are undecided whether they too fall in the same subcategory so we will hold off a decision on them until I do my own research on that.
The Switch to SDA Timing
I made a tweet on this subject so I'll simply link that here on why we felt this change was necessary.
https://twitter.com/d4gr0n85/status/1048280469614125056
If you have any further questions feel free to reach out to us.
Personally i feel only real Megadrive/Genesis runs on real hardware should be the only thing in the console section, The steam version and VC are also bought from their online stores(because you mentioned PS3 & Xbox do this) so pointing that out doesn't warrant any difference in my opinion because anything that's not a genesis is emulating the game with some type of emulator or emulation program. The game was not made for PS3 or Xbox so they would have to be emulating it unless these version were made from the ground up for Ps3 & Xbox which to my knowledge, isn't true and if it were they would probably have even more differences to true Console. I know its more or less a dead game and nobody probably cares anymore, but it really bugs me seeing Ps3 and Xbox under the Console section because anything that is not a Genesis playing, is emulating it. I'm gonna take an educated guess and say the load times and lag are not as bad as the Genesis also, being they are much more powerful ect. Anyways there's my 2 cents. If it ain't on a genesis, its being Emulated and belongs in the other category.
I agree but also I was wondering if I can submit runs done on a modded mega drive 60hz and what that would come under as the only option for console is genesis?
@Marble_Candy I see what you're getting at. At some point I'll inject that change. Thank you.
@ThriftBytes That's a tougher one to address, I'm assuming you are talking about a modded european mega drive. I would imagine, it doesn't change the lag aspect of the hardware (or at least i would hope not) however it may not pass the performance difference. However modding european hardware is not very common so I can't see this becoming a big issue to simply regard it as part of OG hardware. If it does, We'll adust accordingly. For now, put it in the OG hardware section.