What is with this emulator banned rule
South Australia, Australia

It's because PS2 emulators are not great at playing accurate to a PS2. Depending on PC hardware and emulator settings it could give a player either an unfair advantage or unfair disadvantage. I'm sure the mods have a billion other reasons why emulators are banned but I personally don't care if people want to run games on an emulator. Most older consoles allow emulators in speedruns because the experience is authentic enough, but the majority of popular PS2 speedgames ban emulators and probably won't allow them until PS2 emulation isn't broken as it is.

United Kingdom

Oh that makes tons of sense.

Greece

@END_XxpowerhousexX6 In most cases loads are way faster on Emulator compared to a PS2 console, so it would be unfair to say the least. You can still start running the game on Emulator (that's what I did) to learn the route and the game. Save states are great for practicing a fight over and over again. Consoles are just more stable and the prefered choice to run the game and for submissions in general, for main titles that is. There are some handheld games where the Emulator is allowed.