Hi everyone!

After a bit of homework, I realized that using ePSXe 2.0.5 the time from starting the run to seeing "GO!" on the first track was about 25 seconds. When I compared to folks using an actual console, their was about 18 seconds. And when comparing to people using ePSXe 1.8 or 2.0, theirs was 20 seconds. It all came down to loading times.

So worth noting - the loading times in order from fastest to slowest are:
- Console
- ePSXe 2.0 or 1.8
- ePSXe 2.0.5

I unfortunately have not gotten the PS firmware to work on BizHawk personally. Thought this would be worth sharing!

Yeah that's how it works, consoles save time because what the emulators are emulating is specifically the Playstation 1.
On other consoles such as PS2 or PSP, there's a setting called "Fast Disc Speed" which effectively speeds up loading times on every PS1 game, and is a well-known source of annoyance for Sony speedrunning competition. I don't have data on how much FDS saves in total but I imagine it's closer to a minute maybe two.

In any event, I gave it thought for all of 2 seconds and realized that this game would probably function just fine with loadless timing. Atleast, I don't remember it lagging any more or less depending on the platform you play on which is the usual reason PS1 games don't get loadless applied to them. Only issue with that is that it's a lot of work and being a CD-based game, the loading times will inevitably vary between each run, so we'd probably need an OCR load remover or whatever. I think they exist already, but I haven't looked into it.

As far as emulators go btw, they should still aim for accuracy on the console they're emulating so I think ePSXe should be cut off entirely at this point in time and just move everyone to BizHawk.

I will say - I use BizHawk for NES emulation and it works just fine, but even with the firmware I've still never gotten BizHawk PS1 to work properly.

I have no idea if people care enough to talk about standardizing all of this - it seems like a lot of work and certainly I'm not going to be making a serious run at the WR.

Just wanted to get this down as I finally timed it out:

On my 16th-place run (ePSXe emulator), loading times accounted for 3:39 of the run.

On Yarumasi's 3rd-place run (PS2, picked randomly), loading times accounting for 3:05 of the run.

So: not enough to shake up the top 3, but definitely enough to shake up the top 10-15. Certainly explains the huge block of PS2/PSP followed by a huge block of emulated runs.