Can you attempt a run for the legend of the street mode in any difficulty?

I run a handful of games using a softmodded phat PS2 with HDD. It can run plenty of emulators and apps just like PCSX2 would do on PC.. but still runs using the PS2 hardware. I havent truly selected PS2 choice on my own runs has it is not played the traditionnal way; either disc only or HDD support.