The obvious question, when are the start and end times of a legal run? Also, I notice that the gamecube version is run by the top players, is it faster than PS2/Xbox in any significant way? Thanks for any info you can provide!

Time starts when you press New Game and time ends when you suck the final boss into the book. The only reason why it is primarily ran on gamecube is because the loading screens are significantly shorter than ps2. I am not sure if gamecube is faster than xbox though. Most runners of this game are in this discord, which you can join and ask any questions you have: https://discord.gg/0kRxcWhgoDpNE5sw