Game:

Crash Bandicoot (1996)

Duration: 11:32

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20

Three new faces, and a major removal coming in.

First the Consoles.
The 75k & 90k PS2 comes from CaneofPacci you can find him here: https://youtube.com/CaneofPacci/
The 5501 PS1 comes from UnifiedBranding you can find him here: https://twitter.com/UnifiedBranding
In a full run of the game the 90k's issue in loading The Lab would still make up for earlier levels.

We're showcasing the NTSC-U version of Crash.
Why not the NTSC-J version you ask.

In speedrunning both U and J are ran, and people have preference on one over the other and the fact that some top runners have been able to trade positions on which system they use.
(Except for 100% cause J has some levels cut down giving it the advantage.)

The PS2 is there to show what runners use and the PS1 is to showoff the who's the closest to a real console.
All emulators must either be close to or match the PS2 on SDS or the PS1, if they're within a large margin they should be banned.

Now for the bios recommendation and emulator used.
SCPH5501 - mednafen, BizHawk (Octoshock & Nymashock), DuckStation & ares

mednafen is known as one of the most accurate emulators on the field but compared to another competitor it isn't that demanding of hardware.

Compared to the test 2 years ago BizHawk (Octoshock) is still the current TAS emulator but has seen plentiful of updates to stay within matching distance to the upstream of mednafen.
2.4.2 and 2.5 are being showcased as 2.4.2 is the last version where Clock Throttle was the norm and 2.5 became the first version where Audio Throttle became the norm (2.5 also matches 2.6.3 for clarification).
BizHawk will also be introducing an alternative PlayStation core Nymashock which solves many standing issues in the Octoshock core but also has a little performance uplift.
We'll find out if there's any major difference between the two.

DuckStation (0.1-4790-g50db81af (dev)) is showcased for the first and hopefully not last time. Every instances is using Interpreter as the CPU Execution Mode combined with another setting enabled, bar the other CPU Modes used which is using defaults.
This was something that was heavily requested in boards I was in, but I never showcased cause it used to not be aiming for accuracy, until it did right before the emulation rule changes occoured.
Unfortunately for the emulator it hit a clash with RetroArch that I rather not get into the details of it here in the description. But for what it's worth the RA was going to get removed regardless now that we are able to have an emulators for Linux and Mac users (Note: OpenEMU isn't showcased, but it's using mednafen so expect the numbers to be similar to that).

Lastly, ares. This one comes from the late Near who is mainly known for their insanely accurate SNES emulator BSNES. They created ares mainly for the goal of becoming one of the most insane accurate multi-core emulator developed practically in-house.
It may be too fast to actually recommend in a speedrun sense for now, but, I will be watching the development of this passion project which is being looked after by Cxbx-Reloaded's lead developer Luke Usher. I wish the team the best. 💛

SCPH7001 - XEBRA
XEBRA is known as the king of most accurate, and CPU intensive emulator to that of a PS1 and should able to match the load times and lag accurately enough.


The PC running the emulators is an i7-9700k with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER and 8GBx2 3200MHz of DDR4 RAM.
This is one of the best case scenarios possible. Emulator footage is recorded with OBS. All emulators are clean installs with some exceptions already mentioned.

Results:
PS2 75001 (FDS) - 10:43.19
PS2 90001 (FDS) - 10:43.42
DuckStation (Read Speedup: Quad Speed) - 10:57.57
DuckStation (Seek Speedup: Double Seek) - 11:08.22
ares v126 - 11:11.25
- - - - -
Mednafen 1.29.0 - 11:14.19
BizHawk 2.5 (Octoshock) - 11:16.32
BizHawk 2.8 (dev) (Nymashock) - 33a4dda6 - 11:17.44
PS2 90001 (SDS) - 11:18.37
BizHawk 2.7 (Octoshock) - 11:19.44
DuckStation (Async Readahead: Disabled) - 11:27.08
DuckStation (Preload Image to RAM) - 11:27.09
PS2 75001 (SDS) - 11:20.25
BizHawk 2.4.2 (Octoshock) - 11:26.09
PS1 5501 - 11:27.22
DuckStation (Async Readahead: 4) - 11:28.12
DuckStation (CPU Execution Mode: Interpreter) - 11:28.14
XEBRA - 11:28.25
DuckStation (Async Readahead: 2) - 11:28.32
DuckStation (CPU Execution Mode: Recompiler) - 11:28.32
DuckStation (CPU Execution Mode: Cached Interpreter) - 11:28.32

The line has returned, and much like everything else I copied and pasted from last time I'll reuse the explanation:
An emulator that above that line should be banned in the Crash scene for this instance. Crash 1 doesn't have crazy/any amount of lag, and serious runners would just get a PS2.
Those that want to try out the game should use the more accurate emulators. The line is basically for those that are within 5 seconds of the 90k PS2 on SDS.
FDS are provided for anyone's curiosity to see how close DuckStation double speeds are in terms of striking difference.

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