As of right now SSD and HDD don't seem to make a difference. There was some timings done that lead us to believe that the majority of the load times are just random rather than being dependent on the hard drive speed.

As of right now, there needs to be a bigger sample size. If you have an SSD, HDD or PS4 Pro, do a run and submit it so someone can time the loading screens, also skip all the scenes and show the IGT at the end so we know if there's a difference. Dax pointed out that my run and Sonic's have a 1:13 difference between IGT and RTA where we both have an HDD, so this may mean the times even out in the end, or it could just be a coincidence. Either way, do those runs and get everyone a bigger sample size before a decision can be made.

More testing will need to be done with PS4 Pro though to see if it saves time and if it does, how much.

As long as the items icon is grayed out in the beginning there shouldn't be any problem since the only thing that transfers over besides that are the Challenges and cosmetic items.

What makes it kind of a problem is that NG+ is a separate category. It should be separated IMO.

I think this Gears strat is fastest:

Go to the left first, grab Double Jump. Start combo from other side, only finisher has to hit the gears.
Grab Air Slide gear, turn around and get gear in the pit.
On the way up, Double Jump and Air Slide to get to the next Gear, faster than walking.

For bosses:

You can use magic and get multiple magic finishers at once, potentially, you can get Thunder, Fire and Blizzard finishers and do a ton of damage at once to bosses.

You can also skip Blizzard during the Aqua Clones. She laughs right before she appears, you can use Thunder to stagger and interupt this cast, saves a ton of time if you get bad RNG. Shout outs to Barbaracle to noticing that one.

Zhank1, your points came across, so all is well! Thanks for the information. I guess I should just check out everyone's run and try to find someone's play that isn't as crazy as ssbmstuff.

BmanRulesYou21, thanks as well, I'll probably just buy the NTSC-U version in that case, my friend owns a PS2 slim (one of the earlier models) that she'll let me have pretty much indefinitely, so hopefully I'll be having some fun with the game soon!

Wanting to get into the Ape Escape speedrun because it was one of my favorite games as a kid, plus the infinite jumps and movement just looks awesome.

I've watched Markhest1's tutorials and eednob's level guides, but is there anything else? I've been trying to learn from SSBMstuff's WR video but he's a monster and his play is ridiculous looking.

Lastly, does the model of PS2 and region of the game matter? I've seen some games specify what kind of PS2 it is (slim, super slim, fat) when submitting runs, but I don't see it here.

You can use a custom loader such as PriiLoader (there are alternatives, I liked this one the best) to bypass the region lock. I use it to play my JP games on my EN Wii. Chances are, if you followed a guide to install Homebrew you may already have it installed. Hold the reset button on your Wii on the main menu screen to check. You'll know if it comes up.

While it's technically possible to burn the ISO to a disc, I don't believe the Wii will recognize it.

Dios Mios is to play games from a hard drive connected to your Wii.

Super Mod:

GC4ever4001: Took initiative and rallied everyone together to make changes. Definitely has a level head and won't make immediate quick decisions without community input.

Tozino: I see him online every day with few exceptions. I also hear that he was super mod before, and I can definitely see him being able to handle it.

Sarcrai: Kept a level head after the removal of USB loader times, and took his own WR down. Takes a pretty great person to do this, should be a no-brainer.

Mods:

TheOfficialSkozzy: Isn't afraid to speak out against bullshit, yet he has done it with professionalism, something thats hard to come by.

Nimbus: Knows LM very well and has been a very reasonable voice within discussions.

You can check profiles to check activity of people.

As of 4/6/2016, 10:18 PM EST:

Tozino last online 3 minutes ago.
Sarcrai last online 6 hours ago.
Boohead86 last online 20 minutes ago.
Linkus7 last online 3 weeks ago.
Veman3000 last online 1 month ago.
Jaredsgiantz last online 2 days ago.
HDlaxbm last online 32 seconds ago.
Smoof last online 1 hour ago.

As it stands, Veman3000 is defintely out of the game and Linkus7 has been gone for just about the same amount of time.

Super Mods are needed for just in-case situations, and it's a definite that there needs to be at least one around. That being said, it needs to be someone with a level head who can see both sides of an argument without putting their own personal feelings into it to so their decision making is fair for everyone involved.

I have barely been here two weeks at this point, so I have no way of knowing who has that quality and my say means next to nothing, but being around for a long time doesn't necessarily mean anything if they don't have the quality I mentioned.

Since you're using a laptop, you're forced to use an external capture card. Keep in mind that you're going to need to use a splitter of some sort to make the game playable, because external cards are going to have a pretty big delay of anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds. Especially with USB 2.0 cards.

Make sure you grab composite splitters so you can hook your Gamecube up to the TV and capture card.

I understand No Save and Quit strats for older consoles where you could potentially ruin your cartridge, but with a game that has a separate memory card, there should be no reason for it.

Yes.

Thanks for the information anyway LOZRunner, and thanks to you too, HDlaxbm. I'll probably have to see how big of a difference there is in quality, since I have the Wii component cables but do not have the GameCube component cables (or S-Video for that matter) so Wii will probably be the choice for me. I assumed since there were only GameCube submissions that it meant Wii wasn't viable for some reason, but I know now from watching a few streams that Wii and GameCube are both submitted under GameCube.

Thanks for the information guys. I have been dying to play through Luigi's Mansion again for years, finally picked it up and was considering speed running as well. The 20-30 seconds isn't worth the JP console and game cost since I'm doing this for fun for now.

Edit: Also, is it faster to run on Wii or GameCube? I have both.

Since you can't play JP on a US GameCube, is text the only time saver, and is it known how much time it saves?