Hey, so I wanted to give a brief overview of why the rules are as they are. At the time of this writing, the community for speedrunning this game is very small and very new. I'm always open to inquiries and suggestions, and will always be willing to explain my decisions.
First, the Expansion Pak is required. This is to ensure a better experience for runners. Removal of the Expansion Pak will remove some encounters and could theoretically allow a faster time -- it also increases the likelihood of a game crash. Making the game more unstable and losing runs to crashes will make the game far less accessible, and I'm not in favor of that.
Second, I'm allowing emulation of this game. I've seen no evidence of an unfair advantage provided by emulation -- in fact, I've seen the opposite. The Aidyn Chronicles game was not widely distributed and carts can be harder and harder to get your hands on. I'm not looking to increase the barrier to entry for this community.
Project64 1.6 is the closest emulation to original hardware and is approved to run this game. Later versions of Project64 (for example, 2.3) are allowed but inadvisable -- there's evidence that they lose frames upon opening the menu. Other emulators may be allowable, but I ask that you give me a chance to investigate them first -- ideally before you get a PB you really want to submit.
Finally, while I'll not use one myself, I have elected to allow Turbo controllers. This is after looking at the precedent set by Final Fantasy IX, where the excessive repetitive mashing can be dangerous to the wrist. I don't want there to be any accessibility issues with this game. Final Fantasy IX has created a separate category for runs completed with Turbo -- this is and will remain an option, but for now I see no reason to create a bunch of new categories.
In that vein, for the Any% category, cheats are disallowed, but if someone's interested in putting together a route that uses cheats, they're more than welcome, as long as they understand a new category will have to be created for them.
If you have any questions, feel free to post here or contact me directly.
