When the last cartridge decays and becomes inoperable like many pokemon red/blue/yellow carts are starting to do today. Will you open this game up to an emulator? It's not really "unfair" if you pick ONE emulator that runs the game at a set rate, "faster" or not. Eventually there will be no working carts left for this game. My own cart blew the F' out last year, same with my pokemon snap cart. So... what do we do when they're all dead?

Uuuuuh... Emulator is allowed. The runs are just hidden but you can filter runs with emulator if you want to.

From the rules: "The only allowed emulator is Project 64 v1.6. If using emulator, using save states and speedup for any reason is not allowed. If using emulator, the entire emulator, including the window border, must be captured and visible."

In fact, even if emulator wasn't allowed, nothing is stopping you from doing a run and just not submitting.

Most cartridges that "blown out" are just poorly maintained. Many of them that people think are broken can be fixed with a simple cleaning. Take care of your hardware.