By Turbo 2 you're referring to the dip switches if I'm not mistaken. For the rules for 30th Anniversary it says that the game speed must not exceed 3, whereas in the arcade rules it says speed/turbo may be freely adjusted. Thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately in Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 timed challenges are limited to the default settings, but game settings can be configured in regular arcade mode. Is this allowed for runs in the arcade category?

Thanks for the feedback. I left Tenka a message just now.

As for emus accelerating the game, I also posted a video of someone playing the arcade SFA in turbo mode on M.A.M.E. as a reference point to compare the in-game timers to as well as the general speed of the game. From the round start the in-game timer should only count down to 88 in ten seconds, if not less depending on whether performing a Super Art temporarily freezes the timer, not speed it up as in the speedrunner videos in which the timers read 86 and 85. Both the Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 and Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Edition versions of SFA run the same as the arcade.

A1Major is ranked #1 in the Arcade Normal speedrun. He posted highly dubious videos on YouTube claiming to all perfect both SFA1&2 on Expert difficulty, yet never proved it in any case. As someone with extensive experience with the SFA series, let's just say I don't believe he actually did what he claimed and we'll leave it at that.

Naturally I have a reason for asking.

https://www.speedrun.com/sfalpha/forums/3368o

it's not possible for SFA to natively run as fast as some of the top speedrunners are doing here. Even if you play the arcade in turbo mode the in-game timer and gameplay doesn't move that quickly no matter what you do. The only way this is possible is if they're using an emulator or tools which speed the game up to give themselves an unfair advantage. Speedrunners could feasibly smash the WRs in Super Mario Bros. or any other game by making it run faster but technically this would be considered cheating and for good reason.

Shouldn't playing accelerated games where everything moves faster than it normally should be considered cheating in speedrunning? I don't understand how certain players are still getting away with this.

I noticed something's amiss with the top ranked players in both Arcade and 30th Anniversary (A1Major, Kuerten, etc.). The gameplay from several of these videos moves much faster than the regular arcade does. Take Kuerten's 30th Anniversary SFA match against Birdie as an example where the first round beginning at approx. 1:07 in the video or just a few milliseconds before. By the time the video reaches 1:17 the in-game round time at the top of the screen has counted down to 85.

Now observe normal gameplay from the arcade version running on M.A.M.E. captured at 60fps. I'll use the match between Ken and Sodom here for my example, starting at 1:57 but any round 10 seconds or longer in duration will suffice. By the 2:07 mark the in-game timer reads 88. There's a huge discrepancy from these other top speedrunners and that's because, I strongly suspect, they're playing accelerated versions of the game. As someone who's currently at the top of the leaderboards in the Capcom Arcade Stadium 2 Xbox version of this game (6:26) I knew something was wrong when I watched these people play. You look at their footage, look at how lightning fast Birdie's jumps are and other characters moving way faster than they should, then compare them with the real thing.

The same holds true for A1Major in his Arcade (normal) speedrun. This round with Birdie begins at 1:39 but by 1:49 the in-game timer reads 86 which isn't possible during normal play. It should read 88.

Please look into this. Speedrunners using accelerated versions of the game to give themselves an unfair advantage should be considered cheating.