*UPDATE (Jul/21/2018): -Rewrote the script and added more comparison videos. -TLDR: "Recent" releases of Dolphin are slower than console, but the original 5.0 is faster. As such, the current proposed version for running DW4 on EMU is Dolphin 5.0-8307 (link below) https://dl.dolphin-emu.org/builds/dolphin-master-5.0-8307-x64.7z
For starters, PS2 is slow. Like, 25s loads. It's insane, don't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I haven't tested running PS2 on EMU, I so I couldn't say if even then it's unbearable, but it's probably still not worth it anyway. For the Xbox version, I don't have access to a console and there's no Xbox emulator, so I wasn't able to mess with that either.
This leaves us to the Gamecube version, which I've tested it on an actual Wii as well as Dolphin EMU. As per the TLDR bullet point at the beginning, the original 5.0 release of the emulator loads considerably faster than console, potentially saving various minutes by the end of the run. However, at an unknown point between versions 5.0 and 5.0-6803, the game started loading slower than an actual console. This also held (albeit at a different load time) for versions 5.0-7953 and 5.0-8307, and I'd expect it to be the same for everything in between and even for 5.0-8486, which is the current latest release at the time of writing, but I have no tests to back up that claim.
As such, and due to how recent the emulator is updated, it is recommended to run the game on 5.0-8307. EMU loads the game rather consistently, so choosing a single version and sticking to it keeps an even playing field for everyone. There's also the fact that Dolphin is updated very frequently, so keeping tabs on every single version would be a moderation nightmare. I don't expect to change versions, unless we discover something (I have a theory of numenume river being impossible on 5.0 and doable on 4.0) OR the devs release a new version fixing the text bug on EMU. On that note, I've submitted a bug report (link below) which was acknowledged, but so far no fix has been implemented; if a future version fixes that, it might be worth retesting for loads and switching. https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/11087
Lastly, let's talk about testing methodology. I've devised a quick test that can be executed rather easily by anyone, just pick up the game and fire the emulator (no need for saves). The route consists of the following loads: 1-Start game; 2-Loading Commander room; 3-Loading Gate area; 4- Loading Shop area; 5- Loading Main are; 6- Loading Shop area (again); 7- Loading Main area (again); 8-Loading the Tutorial; 9- Loading Death Valley; 10- Loading Gob Gob Room (get there through means of OoB).
To have Dolphin show frames, go to Movie -> Show frame count. I start the time at the following frames: 1- The frame the "Press start" text disappears; 9- The frame the cursor dot completely disappears from the screen; 2~8 and 10- The frame the selection box enlarges. For every load, I end the time the frame the screen turns black for the fade in effect.
IMPORTANT: All numbers bellow were taken in a 30FPS format, even though Dolphin and the videos themselves are at 60. As such, if you do your own count that shows "480" frames, you'd have to divide it by 2 to compare your loads to mine. The reason for that is because the capture card I used to record my console tests was limited to 30 fps, so I decided to halve Dolphin's frame counts when comparing the 2.
(Thinking back, that was a bad decision, and I should just have doubled the capture card's count rather than halving Dolphin's one, but now is too late to change that...)
Lastly, if anyone would like to add their own test videos to these, especially if they are about the Xbox or PS2 EMU, just make a forum post below or ping / PM me on discord and I'll add them to the main body.
Dolphin:
Wii:
PS2:
I know this is 5 years late, but I got the Xbox version to experiment with, unfortunately it's not compatible with a 360 or else that would easily be the fastest loading time of all consoles. In my testing, it's noticeably faster than Wii (about 3-5 seconds faster each loading screen from what I found) and roughly on par/maybe slightly slower than Dolphin 5.0. Not sure if Dolphin updates have affected loading times but I'm almost positive original Xbox has the best loading times as far as original hardware goes. I'll try to find my component to HDMI adapter so I can record the load times.
