(most of the credit here goes to mitjitsu)

There is a glitch to get 9,999,999 dyne at the beginning of the game by using a Panzer Dragoon 2: Zwei save file. It requires the PDZ save file to have 199 hours logged on it. Mine has 199:00 exactly. I achieved this by idling on the Zero Space mission which does not make the disc spin, allowing me to leave it on overnight. I also copied my save frequently to a memory card so as not to accidentally go over 199 hours exactly. There may be some wiggle room with the exact amount of time needed, but 199:00 does work.

When you start up PDS, you'll have -19868 dyne (or close to it). The important part here is the fact that it's a negative amount. After you gain a small amount of dyne with the first encounter, you'll then have 9,999,999 dyne, which is the max allowed by the game.

The game doesn't expect this number to ever be negative, so when it checks to make sure you don't have more than the max, it does an unsigned comparison. This treats your negative amount of dyne as a number much larger than the max amount, so the game hard sets your current dyne amount to the max.

To 100% verify this is happening, I suspect disassembling the game would be required, which I am not willing to do. But I am happily able to verify that early max dyne can be achieved with only a copy of PDZ and PDS.

1. It turns out in order to get the game to actually display 100% at the end, you need to actually collect all the level 2 weapons. In my first full run of 100%, I skipped level 2 bombs, and I was a bit disappointed when it told me I collected 99% of items. In light of this, I think we should require that you get 100% to display on the final screen, requiring all level 2 weapons to be collected.
2. There are 10 of each scroll and 7 of each gem.
3. As far as I can tell, you do have to double-dip The Mystic Room in order to do the wind rod race.

I don't think in game time by itself is a good way to measure for this game. When you die, the game reloads the last save, not counting the time in between the last save and the death.

I also think the difficulty setting of the game (which is "Middle" by default on the EU version) should be specified in the rules. This option only appears to be available after the game has been beaten once.

I realize this game isn't the most actively run game in the world, but I'm going to start submitting runs in the next few days.

Are there any known differences between the JP, EU, and US releases of this game that would be relevant to running it?