That's my point, exactly. While I've used Duckstation and it was near perfect, I'm sure there are other emus as well that would be able to emulate the game without any desync (or under different settings but that would make it even more arbitrary).

However, since there is no common ground or clear rulesets regarding emus, the fastest version for a competitive run is PSXfin which causes horrible desync. Anyone can play the game with any emu and enjoy it but when it comes to actually running you are basically forced to use the worst emulator for the fastest time, something that actually is counterintuitive because it makes running the game crap.

Thank you for your answers btw, forgot to say that before, excuse me. The game's system itself is more than fine.

The actual problem is the emulators themselves that cause the desync, which is a very well known issue you can find with a simple Google search. Different emulators cause different desync, can be better or worse, just like I mentioned with Duckstation being better in my first post. I am not pro any emu specifically but what I am pro is making the game easier and more fun for people to run, that's all.

The desync is very obvious even in your run so why not help runners rather than gimp them? I mean the goal at the end of the day is for as many as possible to enjoy the game we love, isn't it?

Just tried that and it still desyncs. Level starts like normal for a bit and then just desyncs and inputs have to be pressed faster than the actual rhythm. You can get used to it but it is very bad for a rhythm game to be played out of rhythm, you know? Very fast stages like Robo-Z and more slow ones like Kelly's become hell.

Like normally on Duckstation I can do full fever time hard runs and on PSXfin I'm suddenly a big noob lmao. It's a shame resorting to a faster emulator, only to make the running experience crap.

Heyo everyone! I've been meaning to run this like forever and finally got to it. Just submitted my first run and awaiting verification for it. I would like some clarifications about some things that are kinda hazy though.

I started doing runs using Duckstation which had minimal desync between the music and the actual time window for the inputs. However, the times were about equal, clocking in at ~30 mins. So after checking what the 1st place run does, I resorted to PSXfin and more specifically v1.13 which is the one noted by WagnerBrasil, in his submission and load comparison thread.

From my experience doing this, it was very very painful to play on this specific emu because of the horrible desync that gets progressively bad in each stage, start to finish. I was wondering if there are any settings involved to alleviate this problem, because that made it an experience far from enjoyable. I would definitely run this more if there was any solution to the issue. Also, are there any specific bios needed for this? Cause I just followed a YT video and downloaded the one that vid suggested but I've seen from other games that this can affect the game's behavior in unprecedented ways sometimes.

Did you guys ever reach an agreement about the rules in general?