Yes, it's possible. NTSC-U only loses approximately 15 seconds to NTSC-J in an any% run.

"spliced" is a colloquial term that usually implies the runner was dishonest and attempted to pass off a segmented run as non-segmented. so, whether or not it's considered spliced would depend on context.

I answered your question here: https://www.speedrun.com/post/zde5g

Our full mod team discussed your submissions and decided that it was likely you were making up times and submitting to all the categories at once, without actually doing the runs. Many people have done this before, and our policy is to require you to prove that you're doing the runs by providing a LiveSplit file with splits for each shine that you used to time your run. If you do this, your runs will be more likely to be accepted.

(4/4) Thanks for reading. I hope this was informative and worth linking in future to newcomers with this question. :)

(3/4) The last type of theoretical time would be "what time is realistic for someone to achieve in the near future?" This is impossible to quantify with a number, so this is where speculation comes in. Every runner and viewer of the game may have their own opinion, but only the runners with extensive experience playing Any% at a top level have the best idea of what is possible for them. These speculation times will always be changing over time, as the feasibility and consistency of strats changes, and as different runners with different mindsets go for the world record. Currently, most people see a low 1:13 as inevitable, and a high 1:12 as a stretch goal, with @Guy2308 being the main contender. All of these times are subject to change, as the game evolves. However, the feasibility of each type of time stays the same, meaning TAS will be computer-level precise, community SOB will be technically possible but far out of reach, and the realistic time will be tough but in reach.

(2/4)The next one is what @Silver mentioned. The community sum of best is a compilation of best individual-shine times by top-level runners of the game. This time is currently 1:10:53, and its improvement is tracked using a spreadsheet, which you can find here. An edited video with a similar goal that gets a time of 1:11:17 is here (Not every segment time is available on video). While this run is technically more feasible than the TAS run, since all the inputs are being performed in real time, it still is completely unrealistic for a human to achieve. This is because the longer a run is, the more difficult it is to play consistently enough to match your best segment of all time for each shine. RNG adds even more variance, and as a result, top-level runners can only expect to play around 2 minutes slower than their sum of best.

(1/4) This question is more complicated than most people who ask it actually realize. I'm going to take this opportunity to write out information about this, so people with the same question in the future can reference it. There are a few types of "theoretical fastest times." I'll go over three of them for the Any% category, since this is the category with the most documentation and effort put into it. The first theoretical time would be: "what is the fastest time this game can physically be completed, if you could control exactly what inputs go into it down to the millisecond?" This is explored using TAS input: slowing the game down using an emulator and refining the inputs, then playing it back at full speed. The current TAS record is 1:07:52, and you can watch it here.

I spent some time messing around with it, and this gives me non-wide and centered pages (game leaderboard and forum), using Stylus on firefox: https://hatebin.com/dpfqwkoums fair warning, i use speedrun.com at 130% zoom, so some of these width values may not be suitable for people at other zoom levels. feel free to change the numbers to get what you want

edit: i've continued to refine it a bit and have updated the link a couple times edit 17th april: the previous version damaged the runs awaiting verification page; i've updated it again to fix that

If you just want to do, as you say, "a couple sunshine speedruns, without any serious grind," then you don't need to worry about which console or version you play on. The PAL version on GameCube works just fine. To reiterate what Noki said, you can play the Japanese version on a PAL GameCube, but only by using Swiss, which is custom Homebrew software. This may be difficult to do (and requires buying more hardware, like an SD card adapter or a modchip), so it's probably not worth it for someone who isn't going to spend a lot of time speedrunning the game. (Not to mention that GC is slower anyway, regardless of which version you play on.) Of course, it's still your choice, but it's important to know what you're getting into before making that choice.

news posts have no translucent box behind them for me. is this an issue for anyone else? it makes the white text impossible to read with the theme that i use (firewatch), unless i highlight it or scroll down and read it at the bottom of my screen where the background is darker...

If you're looking for a legal loader that works with wiiflow, I can't really help you there, since I don't have the time to research which GameCube loaders are compatible with wiiflow. The simplest option would just be to boot Gecko OS with regular homebrew and not use wiiflow for Sunshine. Remember that booting copied discs or ISOs through any loader is not allowed for this leaderboard.

It'd be nice to have some way of knowing whether or not forum post suggestions will be considered. As of right now, it's a bit like speaking into a void, and I wonder if I should repost in case it was missed. (I posted a bug in 2016 and never got a response, so I'm not sure if it's a mistake that I somehow made, or an issue with the site, or intended behavior.) I assume replying to each post is too labor-intensive, but maybe a public document that shows the status of bug reports & suggestions would be reasonable, showing which are planned to be fixed and which ones have been fixed?

Variables that apply to only one category still appear as a filter option for all categories, cluttering the filter menu. (There are 2 variables in the included screenshot that don't apply, but our plan was to have 7, which we're now probably going to abandon.) We wouldn't have even run into this problem if we could apply a single variable to multiple (but not all) categories, as suggested here and here.

we just moved the hoverless boards around yesterday, those rules were copied from any% and are going to be updated soon. as for the rest of your comments, i dont like nintendo or capitalism any more than you do, but we have to have hardware standards for top level runs of this game. dolphin is too inconsistent and varies from machine to machine. like @FireNinjaAUS said, that doesn't stop anyone from playing emulator anyway, it's just that top level runs done with these inconsistencies are not suitable for the leaderboards.

2:30.20 (The offsets for Peach File and Hacked File can be found in the Game Rules tab on the rules page.)

In standard Dolphin, changing the settings "Skip EFB Access from CPU" and "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" can solve goop issues. Here's a screenshot of what this menu looks like: Not sure if you can change these settings through OpenEmu, but that's what you should look for.

Emulator runs can already be submitted to all the existing categories, and they are not sufficiently different from console runs to warrant a separate category being made for them.

The much-discussed timing method vote for the speedrun.com leaderboards is now live! Voting is active from February 1st until February 22nd, 2020. https://q.zint.ch/ Anyone with a run verified on the speedrun.com/sms leaderboard will have their vote automatically counted. All other votes will be inspected by the mods and the poll committee for verification. The main point of this vote is to decide on additional timing methods to allow alongside the current File Select (with a new file) timing method. FS is not being replaced. Any new method that receives more than 50% of the vote will be added as a submission option, and will be distinguished by a variable on the leaderboard. There is also a question about whether or not the new timing methods should be visible by default or hidden with the ability to view them via a dropdown menu option. If you have any questions, please ask them in our Discord server, in the #lb-discussion channel! https://discord.gg/9dGJWEc