I've been doing some soft practicing the runs on emulator, specifically using Retro Arch's core Swan Station. This has been my compromise as I'm not able to find my disc and it's likely in storage [this is what I get for going for digital backups over keeping track of my physical copies]. My general question is, while I read that epsxe 1.9.0 is the required emulator for official runs [and I did get it set up even though I'm constantly cringing at several audio glitches I can't seem to fix.] is there any potential chance to expand the categories of acceptable emulators? I'm not sure when the category rules were set up but I figured I'd ask. I also wanted to ask is there a reason why the newer version of epsxe hasn't been added to the requirements? Thanks.

I believe school already answered in the discord, but just for clarification: 1.9.0 is the most accurate in terms of loading and lag since it replicates the original PSX pretty well. There are other emulators which are generally accepted on PSX leaderboards, but I don't think they've been tested good enough with World 3 so I can't say for sure. Better just stick to 1.9.0. It's not only the loading times as I mentioned that play a role here, lag matters a lot in this game. The amount of time for the battle menu to pop up can take several seconds on emulator. Though, if you use a PS2 with fast disc speed for example, you'll have them come up much much quicker and more consistently.

Can't help with the audio glitches unfortunately, I don't think I've had that happen, then again it's been a while since I used ePSXe.

Yer School answered it already, I managed to get the sound glitches worked out, hopefully I'll find my disc soon. It's not like it's a deal breaker thankfully. Thanks for the reply here though in case anyone else had the same question. I've been enjoying the game so much as a speed game.