I was watching the new (exceptional) NMG WR from ShinyZeni and noticed something strange. He was able to take control of Samus at roughly the 26s mark, while I consistently am able to take control at the 31s mark. Upon further investigation, it seems like most if not all of my loading times are longer. We both did our runs on 1.0.2 digital. Any theories as to why there is such a discrepancy? Switch 'silicon lottery', or maybe mine is just older?

Make sure your Dread file is on internal system memory opposed to SD card. I've also heard that even just having a SD card in the system increases loads but can't confirm. If you run the digital copy off SD card the load times are almost the same as physical.

That's exactly it, thanks for the reply!