What are the differences between playing on an emulator versus a console? I'd like to know if my times on a PS2 are comparable to the emulator runs. I watched the videos under the emulator category and the courses are slightly different; is that because they're on an emulator or they're playing Rayman M instead of Rayman Arena?

We have different categories because Console sometimes stutters when near CPU Players giving Emulator a slight advantage, if you are looking to run the game (since you are from the United States) I would recommend running Emulator with Rayman M. Rayman Arena is missing 1 huge skip and 1 shortcut that makes it impossible to WR on Console (Rayman M is the European version not obtainable in the US). To answer your question about course differences, Rayman M and Rayman Arena have differences in some courses including shortcuts and overall layout, most of them save a significant amount of time. If you are interested there is a discord that I can eventually give you the link to, let me know if you want to join it.