Hello everyone! I know this board isn't the most active but I figured that since speedrun.com gave us the ability to make news posts I might as well use it to keep anyone who cares up to date! If you have questions or suggestions or criticisms about any of this feel free to sound off in either the forums or the sonic speedrunning community discord linked on the board, specifically in the #other-handhelds channel!

Changes (so far):

1. As you might have noticed, there's been some big changes to the boards. Mainly, all of the individual stories are now split with "Default Emerl" and "Upgraded Emerl" subcategories. As of posting, most of the Upgraded Emerl subcategories are empty, but that's only because I haven't gotten around to submitting my own times to the board yet, and would like to actually have a solid individual highlight for each one as opposed to having to dig back through old vods just to find what my best times were. This will be fixed soon!

2. In addition, the "Any%" and "Any% (NG+)" have been merged into 1 board with 2 subcategories, which is now named “All Stories”, as I felt the name made more sense then just “Any%” and would be consistent with other Sonic games that have multiple stories (Adventure 1 + 2, Heroes, 06, etc.). The subcategories are named “Fresh File” and “Premade File”

I should mention that all the renames are tentative, and open for input! I just figured they would be good names for now. I also updated the rules for everything that was already on the boards, hopefully making them all more clear.

3. Another new category! Aside from the subcategories listed above I mean lol

I added “Challenge Mode: All Characters” to the boards with 2 subcategories (so far): “3-Ring Difficulty” and “All Difficulties”. 1 or 2 Ring difficulties may or may not be added in the future, but I figured only 3-Ring and all difficulties being there made more sense for now.

Just putting it out there now that I set the rules to ban any Virtual Training Glitches similar to the one in this video that completely skip stages. If people would really want to allow them in runs we could discuss adding more subcategories but I felt the glitch completely breaks the spirit of the mode.

4. Updated the theme! Added Trophy Icons for 1st – 4th, new board Icon, and updated the background to be higher quality and brighter too!

5. Added save files in resources for use on emulator or even inject into your cart! (That's what I do). Both files have 100% Skills unlocked, 500 Skill Points, and memory loadouts made based on my latest route.

The story mode speedrun file has every story unlocked and beaten aside from Emerl's Story so you can avoid the Gerald's Journal cutscenes.

The challenge mode complete file has Emerl's Story beaten in addition, but also has all 3-Ring difficulties unlocked in challenge mode!

Those are all the changes so far! There are a couple more changes/additions I'm considering in the future too, and was hoping to get some thoughts on some of these:

1. Theme.

Not sure I'm feeling the current background but I didn't feel like thinking too hard on it at the moment. But I did look into possibly having Emerald Town be the background... but when I tried it...

I just wasn't feeling it. Might look into putting all the overworlds together in one map, maybe make a mockup with boxart, maybe combine all the official wallpapers together, we'll see I guess!

2. IL Boards for each Challenge Mode story.

Basically my idea would be very similar to how the Smash Ultimate IL Boards are set up for Classic Mode: https://www.speedrun.com/ssbu/levels Each Character has 3 subcategories for each difficulty basically, so Sonic for example would have 1-Ring, 2-Ring, and 3-Ring. Maybe could also have Emerl be split by Default and Upgraded too? This of course would entirely depend on whether there would actually be interest, as it doesn't seem there's enough interest at the moment to warrant putting the effort in.

3. In Game Time for Challenge Mode? If we did IL Boards for Challenge Mode I would definitely vouch for those to go by IGT but for the All Characters Times I don't know if it'd be worth the effort just because of how difficult it'd be to keep track of without A ) stopping after each level just to jot down the time or B ) going through your entire video after a PB just to add up times. Am open to hearing what people think about this.

I'm not good at ending things, but yeah if you guys have any questions or input once again feel free to sound off in either the forums or the sonic speedrunning community discord linked on the board, specifically in the #other-handhelds channel! Would be cool if there was actual activity in this game for once besides me! See you soon!