Seems like starting from respawn gives you a 0.6s lead over loading from menu? (Relay Away, Elena)

I was suspiciously faster when starting from respawn, even managed to get a 0:10 while being much slower than PB, so I tested the IGT with breakpoints:

When loading from menu, you are actionable at 1s IGT With respawn, you are actionable at closer to 0.4s IGT

Footage shows you're actionable for 37f@60FPS (0.617s) before hitting 1s IGT.

Should mention that one of the respawn loads I checked was different: it was actionable for 0.533s before hitting 1s IGT, instead of 0.617s

But since all the other ones were consistent that might have been a one-off. Breakpoints stopping/restarting the process made DOSBox go very stuttery at times.