Genuinely curious, what is the reason for deleting the Extra Speed category? It's the true any% run of the game. This website is dedicated to beating games as fast as possible. Seems reasonable that we should be able to run the game as fast as the in-game options allow in the pursuit of true any%.

I realize you're intending this question as a "gotcha," but that isn't going to work here.

When I say "the mods," I'm referring to ALL of the SF2 mods both past and present as a whole with their collective contributions. The vast majority of the rules were not written by myself or A1major or Slowpoke. They were originally created by legacy mods well before I was added 7 years ago. While we did not write them, we still have the responsibility to respect and enforce them, and the runners have the responsibility to respect the mods and the rules. I emphasize it that way because generally speaking, people need to learn to be a lot more respectful.

Regarding how we ran things, the dynamic of every mod team is going to be different. In ours, we had delegation of tasks. A1major and Slowpoke preferred a quieter role in the background and took care of things like run approval when needed. I agreed to shoulder the big stuff like answering DMs, responding to message threads, and managing the main pages including category formatting and rule adjustments as need be.

The working relationship we all had was built on trust, and we simply trusted each other to make good decisions as various situations arose generally speaking. If any of us needed to seek help or clarification (usually in the approval/rejection of questionable runs), we'd hit each other up in those circumstances. We had a mutual understanding. We're just not the sort to bug each other over every little thing. That's an inefficient process anyway.

Now that you have some context for how our mod team agreed to operate, in the particular case of hitboxes I'm happy to share how the rule was made. Every time a community member or viewer had raised the issue over the years, the verdict was always the same. According to the player base, they categorically agreed that hitboxes provide an advantage over standard equipment. To ensure this information was accurate, I conducted extensive online research across a variety of different resources eventually confirming that yes, they were correct in that assessment.

Not only does the more modern hitbox tech provide the player an advantage, there was also plenty of historical precedent for banning them at past official tournament events. According to Krayzar's post earlier, Capcom has finally decided to allow hitboxes in their tourneys. He even said said, "Heck Capcom Top 8 was ALL Hitboxes at EVO 2022." So apparently now everyone uses them, presumably for the exact reason that they are indeed superior to standard controllers.

Our top runners like A1major and Konitama have spent countless hours optimizing the runs on standard gear, and it wouldn't be fair to them to have someone swoop in with superior gear and trivialize all their years of hard work and dedication. The goal here was to protect the integrity of the runs and ensure a level playing field across the board, which is of course exactly what we should be doing. As you can clearly see, given the wealth of information I'd gathered, it was a perfectly reasonable decision to make.

Of course, I know you'd like to spin this as "Andy acted alone" because I didn't run it past the 1 or 2 people you thought I should, when I in fact went above and beyond and tapped into the collective knowledge of entire communities and articles to ensure the action was right. I did my due diligence here, and I stand by my work.

In summation, the research showed that hitboxes provide an unfair advantage. Unfair advantage equals cheating, and as a mod, obviously one of my main jobs is to ban cheating. Worst case, if a mod really did have an issue with it, we could definitely discuss it. If a community member had an issue with it, they could make a public post here so we could all address and revisit it as a group.

You could have used any of those available appropriate avenues for troubleshooting, but this of course never happened, because you'd rather lodge baseless complaints en masse to site admins and rake me over the coals. I was booted without any opportunity to defend myself or explain my side. I still can't even fathom how unprofessional that is. There is supposed to be a process of communication with all parties involved before action is taken. This was absolutely wrongful termination. I put in 7 years of loyal service. Even the site admin who notified me of removal admitted I hadn't actually done anything wrong.

Again, I'll refer you to the long thread where we deliberated over all this. Even Habble agreed that the Extra Speed category should be retained for the exact reasons I implemented it in the first place. He likened it to the "Maximum Alpha" misc category you created for SF Alpha 2. You can find that information about halfway down the page:

https://www.speedrun.com/sf2hf/forums/z80db

FALSE. Absolutely false. I gave you the same response regarding hitboxes that I posted above. The reason for not creating entirely separate categories for hitboxes was NOT because it was too much work. Doing so would DOUBLE the already bloated number of categories we have as it is, and as a mod I have to do my due diligence to prevent categories from spiraling out of control. People just want more categories so they can snag easy world records. I see it all the time.

I will provide screenshots of our exact conversation:

In the interest of clearing the air, the rules we made were not arbitrary. I can point you in the direction of publicly available message threads where myself and other members of the SF2 community deliberated and agreed upon the correct ROM version for speedrunning "Super Turbo." Fortunately, it was the same version that all the legacy runners had used in the past, so we were able to preserve all their older runs, and none had to be rejected. You can read all that information here:

https://www.speedrun.com/super_street_fighter_2_turbo/forums/eookn

Another lengthy thread where we deliberated over everything from rules to the formatting of categories can be read at the link below. I listened to the community point by point and implemented nearly every change they asked of me:

https://www.speedrun.com/sf2hf/forums/z80db

Other rules on the board may exist due to being grandfathered in from before I was a mod. Some may have been created after conversations with other mods of other boards or other individual players who have deeper insight into finer details I may not be familiar with. Online research and reaching out to Street Fighter enthusiasts outside SR had also been a big help.

It was never my intent for the rules to frustrate or exclude people. I was merely doing my best to operate a good clean speedrun board that was fair and created a level playing field for everyone. I have always been open to questions and feedback, but many of the messages I receive tend to be rude and hostile in tone, and that typically doesn't facilitate productive conversation. I would do my best to provide thorough and professional answers answers in spite of it, but I was either met with snark or people going over my head and complaining to site admins to terminate me.

I'm surprised you're not aware of the controversy surrounding hitboxes, but for anyone who needs clarification, I'll provide details below, but firstly, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

1. Game rules across speedrun.com are not universal. They vary widely from game to game. Some moderators choose to allow emulation while others may not, and some may decide to split them into separate categories. Some moderators allow the use of turbo function while others do not. It is up to the moderators of each game to design rules they feel make the most sense for that game. For example, just because the Mortal Kombat boards allow something doesn't necessarily mean the Street Fighter II boards will allow the same thing.

2. The mods have spent a great deal of time, care, and deliberation curating these rules to provide the fairest possible experience to the runners. I'm sure they would appreciate that you not argue with them and know that they have done their due diligence in both their research and their decision making. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Historically, Capcom Pro Tour and FGC events have frequently banned the use of hitbox controllers, so it makes sense for the speedrun boards to follow suit. The reason for the ban is there is sufficient evidence to conclude that hitbox controllers do give the player an unfair advantage over players who use standard d-pad or joystick. Obviously we want a level playing field here - hence the ban. Additionally, the hitbox wasn't even introduced until 2010, so in the sprit of "playing the games the way they were intended to be played," a hitbox definitely falls well outside the true experience of the game from its era.

For a throw, it's as soon as you grab them. If it's a hold, it's when the last hit knocks them out.

According to the rules and various threads where we deliberated over this, it was decided that only SSF2X version 940223 runs can be accepted precisely due to that discrepancy.

According to the new rules, we are only allowed to accept the international version of "30th Anniversary Collection" runs for this game due to a glitch in the Japanese version of Champion Edition causing it to run MUCH faster than the game is supposed to. Apparently we do have some runs both pending and on the board that were played on the Japanese version and probably need to be removed for that reason.

Before I take any action, I will leave this post on the forum for a few days to give anyone time to respond before I remove any runs.

It has been sorted. After incorporating that massive laundry list of changes to the SF2 boards (referenced at the end of the long Hyper Fighting thread) and evaluating the requests voiced there and the requests for additional categories made years ago, I've decided that the current board layout we now have strikes a good balance regarding clarity and comprehensiveness. I realize you may not be getting literally everything you want necessarily, but sometimes finding a good compromise is one of those tough decisions I have to make as mod.

Looks like there was just a simple misunderstanding. We'll get it sorted.

Changes implemented. For more information, refer to the final report in the "Concerns" thread in Hyper Fighting.

FINAL REPORT:

You asked for "Arcade" and "30th Anniversary" versions to be split into 2 separate categories. I gave you that.

You asked for a complete visual overhaul of the boards so the categories are ordered platform>difficulty>character. I gave you that.

You asked for the rules to be cleaned up and clarified with additional information. I gave you that.

You asked for acceptable emulators to be specified. I gave you that.

You asked for two additional qualified mods to be added to the games so we have a total of three. I gave you that.

After gathering information from you regarding the "Extra Speed" category, I have decided to keep it as is and treat it as a single bonus category for bonus speed largely due to accessibility reasons, the lack of popularity of those types of runs, and because I have a responsibility to make sure that the total number of categories doesn't spiral wildly out of control. There's just no sense in creating a ton of extra empty categories that will very likely go ignored. If for whatever reason I receive overwhelming demand from individual runners to add what would amount to a grand total of 72 additional extra speed categories across all platforms and difficulties for Super Turbo and 44 additional categories across both consoles and difficulties for Hyper Fighting, I may reconsider, but it should be readily apparent why I think that's an absurd request.

In the meantime, let's see how the community does with the already bloated number of individual categories we have and go from there.

In summary, I have heard and addressed your concerns, and I have implemented reasonable corresponding changes. Good day.

This thread is locked because impatient users are continuing to pester me. Please be patient.

Revamping and clarifying the rules is on my list of things to do. I will take this information into consideration as I do so.

Hyper Fighting and New Challengers boards completely revamped and looking beautiful as of NOW.

Also just finished completely revamping the boards for World Warrior and Champions Edition, and they look MUCH improved. Hyper Fighting and New Challengers revamps will be completed relatively soon, too.

Happy to report that A1Major has accepted the role for our third mod spot and has been added to all five SF2 boards. He is active in running the games and is probably most famous for his various SoR series world records. He is an absolute beast of a player and highly respected within the speedrun community, so I'm thrilled to have him aboard!

Yes, if you play the 30th Anniversary Collection version, then it definitely goes under the "30th Anniversary" category whether you're playing on Switch, PC, PS4, or Xbox. It was determined that the collection runs at a different speed than the arcade originals, so we had to separate them.

All that seems reasonable enough to me. I will work on implementing these changes in a way that is clear and concise throughout the week in addition to giving the other 4 boards their complete makeovers. Anyone else have any input? Now's the time to let me know!