I just submitted a Grand Prix run with the disc in the tray, so the load times are genuine. But after my run I ejected the disc to find what I had feared: scratches.

I bought this game new old stock and only put it in a CD tray to back the game up on a HDD to play through OPL. The game is on a CD, not a DVD, and I saw only CDs being affected by this, and not DVDs.

I want to make runs of this game on OPL from now on. I know the load times are quicker, but the alternative to me is playing until my CD is unreadable or my drive breaks down. That's bad for anyone playing on real hardware!

So to get up to speed on where I stand:

I have a fat PS2 with an HDD installed with FreeMcBoot. OPL is installed and I have a separate PC running Windows 2000, with a DVD-ROM drive that I use to upload my discs through the network and into the HDD. I scored a brand new unopened copy of RRV and backed it up right away into the HDD so that I won't have to touch the disc tray. I am less concerned with wearing down the laser than I am putting any CDs in the drive. DVDs don't get scratches in there, but CDs (Including RRV) tend to come out with a few new scuff marks. I like to speedrun RRV, but going forward, I will only attempt runs on my backed-up copy. I've already demonstrated in my last runs that I own the disc, so no one can call me a pirate so long as I don't upload it online.

I am a supporter of HDD in speedruns. You're still using real, unmodified hardware, and it pares down the wildcard of variable loading times down to something more consistent. With OPL, I observe slightly faster load times on some games, but others can be only less than a second faster than disc, with seek times from HDD read/write heads the deciding factor over disc drive pickups. It is a time save for speedruns that are dependent too heavily on good load times.

With PS2. Using the HDD to play games should be allowed on speedruns such as for RRV for these reasons:

• Hardware is real and remains unmodded
• Affordable and available
• Only contention is that OPL does apply patches to the games backed up on HDD, but I would argue that if the patches only allow the game to be played the same way as if it were loaded in the disc drive, then runs should be accepted all the same.
• Again, load times would be a more debatable issue, but I would argue that with the positives of the above points made, anyone with a PS2 fat can reasonably set their console up to play their library of PS2 discs without ever needing worry about worn down lasers or scratched discs, and enjoy optimized, consistent load times that would eliminate any variability of a speedrun that's otherwise out of the player's control.