Hey people,

I am new and I am guessing this got asked a thousand times already, but I am a little bit lost on what would be allowed when it comes to emulation. Specifically for SMW hacks.

I do own a PAL SNES but I am pretty sure that thing is unusable for anything SMW because it runs at 50Hz? (and I also don't own a FX Pack or similiar) and getting a Super NT in Europe is almost impossible and also super expensive and that's the main reason I want to use emulation.

So my question is: which emulator offers the best image quality, least input delay and is also accurate enough to be comparable to actual hardware?

So far I've tried Snes9x, which just looks like a blurry mess to me, bsnes (which was super nice, but I am pretty sure things like run ahead are not allowed and that was basically the one option that gave me a similiar feeling to using my actual snes) and I've also heard that some people use retroarch but reddit and other forums didn't really give me clear answers as to if that's a legal emulator.

I've also checked the FAQ on here but it didn't really help me find the "optimal" setup.

In short I just wanna know which Emulator is generally accepted or tolerated, specifically in the SMW hacking and speedrunning community. What settings can I use to make it feel as close to original hardware as possible, with the least amount of input delay, while still using settings that are allowed?

I am a newbie to all of this and I only finished 2 hacks so far, but I wanna set it up it right in case I ever wanna get "serious" about speedrunning something!

Thanks in advance for any help! :)