Regarding Clone Systems
6 years ago
Ontario, Canada

Hey all,

So, in light of some runs that were just recently submitted which were done on a Super Retro Trio, the question of what to do with clone systems like these has come up.

First some terminology so we're all on the same page. What we are in this forum thread calling a "clone system" is something like the Retro Trio, which contains a clone of a SNES (among others) implemented in hardware. The system isn't running an OS (such as Android, or whatever else). This is similar in many respects to an Analogue Nt, and many other similar types of clone systems implemented via FPGA's or what have you.

This is not to be confused with something like a RetroN which for lack of a better term, we will call a "emulator system" because it is basically a computer running an OS (commonly a mobile OS like Android) with software emulators pre-installed. The exact same emulator software that you could get on your PC or phone.

Currently for Star Fox, emulators are banned.

However, we have no such existing rules to deal with the hardware clone systems.

After some discussion today, we think that the best option is to allow these runs, but to always ensure that they are clearly marked as a run that was done on a clone system by mentioning it in the run comments (since speedrun.com doesn't give us many other options short of creating all new categories... yuck).

HOWEVER: Runs done on such a hardware clone system are done at the runners own risk. If it is deemed in the future that these runs are "bad" for whatever reason (e.g. some issue with the hardware is uncovered and we realize that the game runs too fast on the clone... or something else like that say) then we may need to remove these runs from the leaderboards. It's quite possible that nothing like this would ever happen, but consider this fair warning!

At any rate, we'd love to get the communities thoughts on this! Are we being too anal about it? Does someone have a better idea on how to handle it? Does this not even matter at all, and hey, let's just get back to playing Star Fox?

Let's talk about it!

Pennsylvania, USA

I'd say for now having a list of bad clone consoles would be a good step in the right direction, I've played on a few clone systems (supaboy, fc twin), and they feel just about as close to original hardware with the exception that fc twin can't play certain games, and I think some sound issues.