Currently the rules don't state anywhere that 30th Anniversary Collection runs are supposed to be submitted under the arcade category. The rules are also unclear on emulation. The rules state "Official release only" which would imply emulation is banned, which isn't the case, and you have to dig through the forms to get answers regarding which SNES emulators are allowed. I can't even find anything about which Genesis emulators are allowed.
Don't overthink it.
For our purposes, we consider the 30th Anniversary Collection to simply be another form of arcade emulation. I'm aware of some speed differences, but there are also speed differences depending on which version of MAME is used or if you're running on a MiSTer as well, and it would be impractical to have categories for every possible difference, especially because we have an insanely high number of categories as it currently stands. If you're looking to get your best possible time, my advice would be to play whichever version of the game you think runs fastest.
As far as which emulators for each console are allowed, my understanding is that this sort of thing is generally universally recognized across the sr platform, but if you need more details, I'll refer you to speedrunslive list of accepted emulators:
"Can I play on an emulator?
If the emulator is accurate and the community for that game accepts emulator as a valid choice, then yes, you can. The most commonly used emulators for each system include:
NES - FCEUX 2.2.0
GB - bgb
SNES - SNES9x 1.53
GBA - VBA 1.7.2
Genesis/GameGear/SMS - Fusion
N64 - Project64 v1.7
For reference, the following emulators are globally banned for use in racing:
SNES - ZSNES, snes9x 1.4x
N64 - Project64 2.x
GB/GBC - VBA, VBA-M
GBA - VBA-M (use VBA instead. If VBA does not support your GBA game, please contact an op.)"
Emulators aren't at all standardized amongst this website. Yoshi's island bans Bizhawk whereas Mario World doesn't, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out bans front ends like retroarch whereas Zelda 1 doesn't, Mario Kart Wii bans all emulation whereas Punch-Out Wii doesn't, ect. So a rule page explicitly stating which emulators are allowed is expected for pretty much every game.
To address the problem with the 30th anniversary edition you could just copy what the moderators of 3rd Strike did. They only allow WolfMame and Retroarch with FBA Core, since they where both proven to be arcade perfect for third strike, while also explicitly banning mame emulators shown to be inaccurate, such as Fightcade. Then they made a separate category for 30th anniversary edition since it is an official release while also being inaccurate (just like the SNES version). If you absolutely must have the 30th Anniversary edition be in the same category as arcade at least have that be stated in the rules under arcade or have the category be called "Arcade/30th Anniversary" so that newcomers will know where to submit their runs.
Good to know. I can get to work on a clarified rule list so there is no confusion.
