Hi!! :)
My name is Sérgio Oliveira aka HolySan and i'm a 26 year young boy from Portugal.
I've been in love with games and video-gaming since i was really young. This last couple of years or so i've been watching speedruns and i completly feel in love with all the passion and commitment that every single speedrunner puts into every game he/she runs.
I've been trying to convince myself to try it but i just don't now where to start. I have a few consoles myself but i have no capture cards to record from.
And now the questions begin. Is it ok to use emulators? If so, what type of emulators can i use for, let's say, gameboy/ds and playstation1/2??
If anyone can please hit me up with some tips i'ld be appreciated!
Emulator rules differ based on game/community - check with the moderators of the game you're interested in running to find out if emulators are legal.
In most cases, PS1/PS2 emulation is usually always banned because they run faster than console and for Gameboy, Gambatte is usually allowed while Visual Boy is banned for the previous reason.
As already said by Timmy you better check out the specified rules of the gaming communities for each emulator you're going to use, in some of the games you've got shorter loading time on some consoles than on the others which is crucial and makes great difference for speedrunning, so make sure you play in as much the same condition as the other players to make it fair to everyone in that community. :)
As for the capture cards, if you just want to have your in-game records approved in the websites such as on this speedrun com you can use just about anything to "record/capture" something which can prove your record, but if you really think you want to get involved into the competition by "posting" your runs regularly, then I guess you better get a capture card as it's the normal way to share our game plays and show the others "how you did" in the games. :) (I've been playing the games every now and then too but still don't have a capture card either)
Also, welcome to the speed.run forum ! I hope you find the community helpful and rewarding for your speedrunning, gameplay and other things other than video gaming. ;)