Hey everyone, last night I made the transition from an emulated version of this game, to a legitimate disk using my Nintendo Wii. I made this transition because I got a replacement disk and component cables for enhanced video quality.

More importantly, during my attempted/completed runs last night, I felt as if my load times were slightly increased than what I was previously used to. There are three factors to consider:

• The first being that an emulator may speed up load times.
• The second is that I was using the NTSC (US) version on my emulator, whereas now I'm playing the PAL version which may also affect the load times slightly.
• The third factor could be that I'm using a Nintendo Wii, which essentially emulates the GameCube platform.

Any additional info/help from the HP2 console community would be greatly appreciated to help identify whether or not there are any load time differences considering these factors.

Let me know what platform you guys use (Wii/GCN), because it would be very useful!

Cheers.

The PAL version of the game is definitely slower than the NTSC version, also I run on Wii.

I would assume that emulator has faster loads than console, but it's something that would need to be tested.

After doing some research, I've found out that the NTSC version of the game on Xbox and GCN allow up to 60fps whereas the PAL version of both these platforms only supports up to 50fps. I'm no scientist, but I'm guessing that this has a significant impact on both the flow and speed of the game overall (I noticed it felt slower watching my stream from last night than my previous streams).

Thank you StarrlightSims for your help, I really appreciate it!

However does this mean I'm gonna have to play on an NTSC copy of the game in order to achieve the best possible time? If so that would require an additional international Wii and copy of the game (in the instance that an emulated version is illegitimate).

Any thoughts on what I should do for my next run? Or how I should go about continuing these runs?

If you wanted to go for an optimal time, you would have to invest in an NTSC copy of the game. You can make you Wii region free by using homebrew, which is what I do, as for the fastest copy, NTSC and JP seem nearly identical in terms of speed, so there isn't a massive difference between them. Obviously, this is all dependant on whether emulator is faster than console or not.

Considering I now own 2 copies of the game (due to the first being heavily scratched) it feels redundant to purchase another copy. A theoretical way around this would be to transfer an iso of the game onto a bootable USB or other bootable device. Would this be considered legitimate in terms of running this game? To explain, I'm not playing on a disk, but rather the USB which may affect the load times of the game in addition to the regional differences in load times. Would this be allowed for submitting a run?

Cheers.

It once again would have to be tested to see if there is an effect on load times.

So if the load times aren't affected by the USB vs Disk scenario, then I would be all good to run NTSC on my PAL Wii console?

Another Update!

Unless you guys were aware of this already, the Xbox has significantly faster load times than the GameCube counterpart. I stumbled upon a HP2 comparison video which detailed this finding, but also viewing JAsh15's run it became apparent to me that the load times are undoubtedly faster.

So as a verdict, the fastest run comes down to two factors: NTSC version and Xbox.

• NTSC as mentioned above, is undoubtedly faster to run than the PAL version of the game.
• Xbox has significantly faster load times, which has the potential to reduce the WR time by a fair margin.

So assuming that the NTSC vs PAL scenario carries over to the Xbox platform, then we can deduce that playing on the Xbox using the NTSC version will be the fastest way to run this game.

if this game works anything like the other gamecube games i've seen, then emu will be much faster than any console could ever be. USB loading the game would most likely severely improve your load times. The wii version should have about the same loads, if not faster as it essentially has a gamecube built into the console. NTSC also tends to have better loads then PAL

Cheers mate, I appreciate the info!

So it looks like I'll just have to homebrew my Wii and purchase an NTSC copy of the game which is a little annoying but not too much of a problem.