Fairly new to the community, I'm almost always a casual player when it comes to games so I've never given speedruns much thought until I started watching Games Done Quick during the summer in 2016. My main concerns mostly have to do with running old console games; is it frowned upon to use emulators? I have a bunch of other questions but that one was burned into the back of my mind for a while and ultimately stopped me from trying out speedrunning in the first place

Emulators are banned/allowed on a game by game basis so ask the mods of the game if emulator is allowed if you want to be sure.

The general consensus though is that for older consoles like NES where emulation is very accurate, it's allowed to use them.

That was my plan, just the old goodies like NES and SNES. I suppose to be safe right now I could dabble into my Steam