It should be time to sort FDS out, because rules haven't really been set in stone.
There were some thoughts a while ago that FDS was unstable, so it would be best to avoid it, but recently it's been shown to be faster than emulator (at least, the intro loading screens totalled to about 2s faster), and stable.
I know I've been a bit of a tit about it, but I'd say now that FDS should be allowed; it's official hardware, and if it's faster, that's okay. I guess I've always been for level playing fields, but if it's faster, it should be allowed.
What does the rest of the community think?

I completely agree. This just consists in beating the game as fast as possible. Furthermore, the community for this game is emulator-based, which means that there are (almost) no runners playing it on an original PS1. So yeah, I think FDS should be allowed

New to this forum, and new to that game.
Can you explain what is FDS, and exactly what change between this and Emulator ?

Welcome!
FDS (Fast Disc Speed) is the option on PS2 to be able to play PS1 games at PS2's disc speed, which makes loading times much shorter (and possibly reduces lag). I'm not sure of the total time, but theRedhotbr found that, by the end of the intro, Emulator saves ~2 seconds over Standard Disc Speed (PS1's disc speed), but FDS saves ~2 seconds over emulator.
We didn't really disallow it, but we were originally unsure how stable it was, so console runners tended to stay on SDS.

From my point of view (new runner, and first game I run), I can't really have a NTSC PS2 (living in Europe). Maybe it's the same for a part of runners. Emulators seems more universal.
Can the Emulator have this FDS option ?

Unfortunately not. You could have an NTSC PS2, using certain adapters, but it costs a lot of money. It's a bit unfair to emulator users, but it's also wrong to ban the fastest official version.
Maybe if we knew the exact load times of both emulator and PS2 FDS and SDS, we could have a loadless-time option to see who's actually fastest, which is calculated by taking off load times - I know Crash: The Wrath of Cortex does this because PS2 is way slower than Xbox and GameCube in terms of loads.

Good point. Although that would mean having to sit through the credits every time (as the only savepoint after the final boss is at the Wizard card book iirc), it would be a universal timer and could even let the NTSC-U and PAL runners into main competition. The only other thing would be to ban S&Q so no segmenting is done; I'm sure the game would count death time into game time but we'll have to check.

Fortunately, I saved my last PBs to check how 'accurate' IGT is
1:40:54 (RT) -> 1:38:36 (IGT)
1:38:51 (RT) -> 1:36:57 (IGT)
1:36:46 (RT) -> 1:35:22 (IGT) [Done with ePSXe 2.0, not very sure about its accuracy]
1:37:49 (RT) -> 1:35:44 (IGT)

By doing this, I've just realised that IGT 'fixes' the difference of ePSXe 2.0 and its shorter loads compared with previous versions of the emu

Does it fixe the difference between PAL and NTSC ?

Yes, I remember that, in HP2PS1 (it should be the same result), for 100% my PAL PB is over 20 minutes slower RTA than my NTSC PB, however, in-game time is actually 30 seconds faster, and I know the PAL PB was a better run, so PAL's timer doesn't have an advantage. I guess I never got round to switching to IGT 😖

IGT definitely seems like an 'accurate' timing method (we still need to check PS2 FDS tho), not in terms of real accuracy but in terms of fixing the differences between diferent versions. The problem would be changing all the times on leaderboards, since no runners will have access to their in-game time 🙁

If we switch to IGT, RTA will still show up still, and current RTA times will be put down as the IGT times. It is a bit unfair for old runners, but they can come back and get new PBs if they want to; if not, RTA will still roughly show their skill level.
Plus, you're the only runner with a run with Early 4-Eyes and with known IGT, so IGT will be implemented at a good time, because all times before are 'obsolete' in their route and competition only really happens at your level which will have IGT. I hope you see what I'm saying here.

I see your point. I still think it's unfair for every runner except me, but you're right: they can come back and run the game again to gen an IGT time.

What I propose (I'm only suggesting) is changing the leaderboards to IGT. Then I suppose ePSXe 2.0 can be used again, since loads are not relevant anymore

I agree with switching to IGT, and yes, ePSXe 2.0 can be allowed, so your real PB can go back.

Actually, I had no idea about the IGT timer stoping when the game is paused 🙁

What was the conclusion on this? Are we switching to IGT as the main time on the leaderboards? Since pausing in-game causes the IGT to pause as well, do we accept this, or is it silly that you can pause anytime, leave, come back and lose no time?

We're switching to IGT as the main time. However, we still use RTA as a reference. No one has done that so far (exploiting pause), but if it happened, I suppose we would include that time 'lost' as a penalty

I noticed yesterday that it seems like there's not complete certainty of when the IGT counts. When exactly does it count and when does it pause?

It counts gameplay and cutscenes. It doesn't count paused time (including save game menus) and loading times. Like Slend said, exploiting pause isn't common but if it's done, there will be a penalty (pause buffering inputs is not exploiting IGT).

What about running on a PS3?