I saw a speedrun from 2015 (it's not from me) that uses the Hot Top Volcano wrong warp to get to the hub in two-player mode, getting to the Future Fun Land lobby in a plane, and flying through the upper terrain to skip everything and race Wizpig 2 as the only race finished in that run. Given the run I saw was just over five minutes long and possibly could have been sub-5 minutes, there has to be something about it that the leaderboards frown upon given that I couldn't find a single full game run with a time like that or lower in any category. Can someone please enlighten me as to what from this isn't allowed?

The run I saw is below.

I ask this because in Lego Batman 2 (which I know uses a newer engine than this game), the equivalents to this game's Hostages are called "Citizens in Peril". In Lego Harry Potter, you have "Students in Peril". In all three Lego Marvel video games, you have "Stan Lee in Peril". In Lego Batman 3, you have "Adam West in Peril".

I'm curious why this game uses the term "Hostages". Looking through the PDF of the manual (I've played this game through Steam as a digital copy, so I get a digital manual that still assumes it's a physical copy), there's no mention of Hostages by any term. And the icon the game uses to determine if you've rescued them or not doesn't use the term either. So did it come from a guide or something?

Also, I can't save my progress without using save states (because this emulator can't emulate the Mario Card some of the original cabinets used to save progress), but I don't know why all of the characters' personal karts (that raise top speed but lower acceleration) are already unlocked when this game's attract mode claims that I'm supposed to earn them by collecting Mario Coins (which replace regular coins when using a Mario Card). I hope that doesn't disqualify me because I don't know how to disable it. It seems that the game freezes or doesn't work like I want it to if any of the other patches I copy-pasted are disabled (those causing it to ignore seeking for other cabinets, which freezes it, one getting it stuck in a test mode, one freezing the game due to it assuming it has a Mario Card dispenser and slot and failing when I say I want one, and one blocking out a feature I know doesn't work on Dolphin, that being the NamCam). I have disabled the rest, one of which makes the color commentator shut up, another locking the number of credits at 99, and more I don't understand.

How do you emulate a Mario Card when you're playing on the Triforce branch of the Dolphin emulator? Sorry for necroposting.

Because if not, why are they on the leaderboards?

While several games I've seen list (official) digital re-releases and backwards compatibility as part of the list of consoles you can play them on, I've also seen some games ignore the fact that you can play Wii games on the Wii U through backwards compatibility rather than just through digital re-releases. Is there a reason for that? I don't know where else to put this.

I noticed that Pikmin 1's All Parts leaderboards separate GameCube and Wii runs.

I'm asking because there doesn't appear to be a glitchless category even on the category extensions.

With all these games (this one included), I've been wondering why world record times are faster in single player. Is there an exploited glitch in all of them that doesn't work when there are just two playable characters and both are consistently controlled by human players? Yes, I know at least some of these games allow one player to use two controllers, but I doubt one person controls two characters throughout the whole run.

Doing math to find out how many Shines are intended to be the minimum you need to beat the game, I arrived at 49. There's the one at Delfino Airstrip, Shines 2-7 of Bianco Hills (the developers let you skip the first Shine, though an NPC asks if you're getting ahead of yourself if you go for Shine 2 while in Shine 1, and Shines 1-7 of all the rest of the courses. I know you can use glitches to get the Watermelon Festival early, but if you decide not to do that, I think 49 is the minimum because Episode 7 of every level is all you need to get to unlock Corona Mountain, a name that aged poorly.

So why doesn't anyone do 49 Shine speedruns of the game? Or call them 50 Shine speedruns if the one in Corona Mountain counts?