As I said, use the original game's aspect ratio, whatever it happens to be. If the game has SGB-specific design, then use the aspect ratio it was designed for.
My view on this issue is the following:
The SNES streatching the GameBoy image to the 4:3 aspect ratio of a TV was a mistake (or, more precisely, just a question of "they didn't care"), and past mistakes don't justify repeating them.
"They didn't care" in this case means that, most probably, the people who designed the system just didn't care if the image gets stretched (ie. completely disregarding the game designers, who had developed the games for the GameBoy's screen), and simply wanted for the image to fill the entire TV screen because "black bars are evil" (the exact same reason why people stretch 4:3 images to 16:9 on widescreen TVs; it's idiotic and wrong).
What the SGB designers did was wrong. We shouldn't repeat the same mistake just because they did it. Hence I vote for the original aspect ratio of the game to be preserved.
Btw, I have never understood what's so great about the Halo series. I tried Halo 3, and it was such a bland and average FPS that it couldn't be more average. In fact, I'd say it was slightly below average. There was nothing enticing or special about it.
Perhaps I just picked the wrong representative?
How do we know this isn't a symptom of some bugs in the emulator that, maybe, the run itself is (inadvertedly) exploiting to get a faster time than should be possible?
Is the text in the title screen of the game supposed to be cut off on the right side? (It says "spiderma", "web of fir" and "(c) & TM 1996 Sega, all rights rese".)
Actually, responding (with quotes) to several posts in one post is quite laborious and non-obvious in this phpbb interface. There should be an easier way of doing it (or at least a more obvious way).
Actually, when you buy a software, you don't own the software. You own a license (ie. permit) to use the software. It's certainly not the same thing. This even from the point of view of the law (in most countries).
Since the whole idea with the imposed 3-day waiting period is that the author is given the fair opportunity to defend his submission, I suppose that uncancellation could be considered a sign of the author wanting to do so. If that would ever happen (for a genuine reason rather than just for spamming/trolling), the judges should respect the author's wish (ie. to have the submission on the queue for at least the 3 days). Which in turn means that a judge should be able to cancel a submission only once but not more.
Of course since it's assumed that the judges are fair and just, it shouldn't be necessary to go and actually literally limit the judge-imposed cancellations to one, as long as it's made clear to the judges that in such a situation the wishes of the author should be respected, rather than starting a cancellation/uncancellation war.
(Of course in the rare case that someone abuses the uncancellation option for trolling or spamming, more drastic measures will have to be imposed, but let's hope that doesn't become a popular form of vandalism.)
You said that reverse engineering is illegal, not that it's against the wishes of the owner. Those are two completely different things. EULAs don't dictate law. That's why I asked.
It depends on the country. In some countries only distribution of reverse-engineered material is illegal, not the reverse-engineering itself (which makes sense because it would be quite difficult to enforce such a law; how do you control what people do in the privacy of their homes?) Other governments do not think so logically about this and have it illegal outright.
Software usage licenses often forbid reverse engineering, but such licenses never override the law. (For example in Finland being able to make a backup of a software you are legally authorized to use is an inalienable right, and no license agreement can override that fact, no matter how much it says so, and no matter how much you have "accepted" the license.. The law actually specifically and unambiguously states that any part of a usage license saying so is null and ineffective.)
Btw, I like the effects that happen when the MissingNo is caught. In fanfiction MissingNo is often considered an eldritch abomination of the pokemon world. The description of an eldritch abomination is quite graphic:
In the run, after catching such a foul creature, you see the induced madness in the main character for a while, when reality is warped and distorted, until he once again regains his sanity.
Which is exactly why "SD" is a bad term for a video which uses the resolution of the original console. In TV technology "SD", or "standard resolution", is 576 scanlines in PAL systems and 480 scanlines in NTSC systems, which is certainly significantly higher than the typical vertical resolution of old consoles, which were typically at most 240 pixel lines (usually less than that).
"SD", if talking about an NTSC game, would imply a resolution of 640x480 pixels (for a 4:3 aspect ratio video). However, in this context it's really referring to the native resolution of the console, which is typically something like 256x192 or the like.
Some people might be used to "standard" when talking about TV. It really doesn't give the same impression when talking about video game footage resolution as "native" or "original" do.
Further, make it so that there's only one input (that's run in both games) and finish both games (preferably on the same frame) with that same input. Thus we end up with a dual TAS where the games actually interact with each other at points.
That actually sounds like a terrific idea.