Seeing all runs are Single Segment, it isn't really a problem.

It is. The most extreme example would be if you had a quick death at the beginning of Raven Beak or the Ferenia Robo. Typically these would be time losses of about 30 seconds, which is not the worst thing in the world. But because there are skipped cutscenes at the start of these boss fights and it will add the time of those cutscenes again after reloading, you're losing 3-5 minutes off of a 30-second mistake. Because of a quirk of the way Total Play Time works.

It's not that Total Play Time lines real time, it's just that we thought it might be possible that it was a consistent way to measure different ways of playing the game without any inequities (since load times don't count but all gameplay and menus do).

That said, unfortunately, it turned out that total play time doesn't track time spent in the home menu and will count cutscene times multiple times if you need to reload at any point. Just too many problems to really be useable as a default time ranking.

I'll also chime in and say that 8bitdo Pro+ is prone to bricking and shipping for repair costs almost as much as the controller itself. 8bitdo is good when it works but it's spotty.

Runs are broadly reviewed in order of submission, though occasionally some runs are approved ahead of the strict queue order for a couple reasons. If a run is below the top 30/15 threshold where video proof isn't required, it doesn't need to be scrutinized as closely, and so those can be approved even if the person verifying doesn't have two hours to spare. The other thing that can happen is if the verifier already saw the run happen live, then that also makes it easier to verify in a shorter period of time. I hope that helps.