EDIT May 20, 2020: This post is outdated. See subsequent posts for more information.

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Emulator is currently both allowed and integrated with the console leaderboard for this game (Mednafen PSX, Beetle (non-HW) PSX, and BizHawk are the allowed emulators). Even with these (currently most-accurate) emulators, emulation in general seems to clearly perform better than console. The amount of time to be potentially saved is not known and is difficult to test. Notably, the difference between console and emulator seems to be far less dramatic in this game than in the first King's Field game released in the US, for which emulator is still hidden by default.

The principal difference between console and emulator occurs when performance dips. In places where console would drop frames, emulator performs better and drops fewer frames. One example: opening the sealed door to Verdite Castle in the Hill of Prayer causes the game to chug on console, and while emulators do drop frames here as well, the performance hit is less pronounced and thus time is saved over console.

Currently, this game is not big enough to justify any sort of split in the leaderboards between emulator and console. This is something that may be considered in the future as the differences become more concrete and documented, and as the runs become more optimized. Ideally the accuracy of emulators in recreating console performance will improve over time as well.

Given the above, we recommend players submit runs performed on console whenever possible. That said, we do not want to discourage anyone from attempting to run this game, so please feel free to play on emulator and submit runs!

The current state of things as of today (May 20, 2020) is that the fastest known platform is PS2 with model number SCPH-75000 or higher, with FDS (Fast Disc Speed) enabled.

Since this was discovered, emulator appears to actually end up a little slower than SCPH-75K+ consoles with FDS enabled - the difference in performance/"lag" is mitigated by the SCPH-75K (compared to PS1 or pre-75K PS2s, which lag more) consoles, and since PS1 emulators do not have access to PS2's FDS feature, they lose time during loads.

Beetle PSX is no longer allowed, as it runs the game slightly too fast. Bizhawk PSX actually runs the game slightly too slow. Mednafen PSX is the recommended emulator.