After reading through this forum and doing a little bit of my own research, I've realized that the loading times for this game vary greatly from player to player. In order to get the optimal loading times you must be playing with the original game on a specific ps2 model. With this game already not having too many runners, I think it may be best to switch to timing runs based off of only the time spent actually in the levels and not in the loading screens to even the playing field for current and future runners who want to stay competitive. I know that Sonic Adventure 2: Battle times their runs in a manner just like the one I have proposed to eliminate the need for specific hardware/versions of the game since there are so many options and variables. I feel like this would be the most inclusive method of timing the runs as no matter what hardware (ps1, ps2, ps3, emu) or version (console, pc) of the game you have, you will be on an even playing field with everyone else. I am not quite sure how difficult it would be to implement something like this, but just wanted to put it out there. I'll post a link to a pastebin where I'll show some of the research I did. https://pastebin.com/czzQXWkx