[Don]

Okay fellas, I made a new topic under a broader name, since Dios Mios, Harddrives and backwards compability.

To go back to TimpZ reasoning: The stage does not "expect" to be loaded X seconds, seeing how loading times don't just vary from Hard Drive to Hard Drive. While Wiis are standardized hardware, mine has a halfway broken laser, and my harddrive sometimes still loads slower or faster randomly. I'm gonna guess it's stage dependend.

Either way: My point still stands that there is not enough differences to force proof onto harddrives, because as far as I know it does not influence gameplay. The game 'triggers' when you can move, you should know that. Example: Sweet Mountain 6, or any stage Sonic starts running automatically. You know how the game behaves. You shouldn't bring Sonic 2 into this, seeing how largely different the hardware difference is in this case. As for Generations and Unleashed, which are much closer to this example, Parax already told you how it works in the other thread.

[SpinDashMaster]

You would do well to insert quotes or link to the relevant posts, so we can all catch up.

[TimpZ]

My argument is simply this: Just like emulators, there might be unexpected results from using a HDD for games on a competitive level. Therefore, just like with the emulators, we should demand videos from these just in case something doesn't go as expected instead of blindly allowing it and potentially missing illegitimate stats.

[Don]

Now the thing is, loading the game from a harddrive does not change the game. At all.

It's comparable to how a game is installed on a harddrive for a computer. It's properly installed and read from that hard drive. Now, the only reason why anything ELSE would happen, is if you somehow modified your copy.

There is no room for error in reading a disc, unless the disc is at fault.

[TimpZ]

Now the thing is, loading the game from a harddrive does not change the game. At all.

Wrong. While it might not change the actual code, it changes how the code is read. In metroid prime 2, all rooms load faster than on disc which on one hand makes the game faster to play through but on the other hand also harder to glitch since some tricks rely on the loading time taking a while so you can set up while the next room is loading.

The same is true about most games off of a HDD rather than disc. Some even load slower. Can you say with absolute certainty that no games on this site are affected by this at all?

And like I mentioned in the other thread, the games don't get read perfectly either. Some games crash, others are buggy. Most work fine on a casual level but you can't tell with certainty exactly what is affected or not.

[GerbilSoft]

With Wii games, there should be absolutely no difference. Games don't read from disc directly; they make a request to IOS, which handles how the data is read. Custom IOSes merely redirect disc requests to SD or USB. (They can also redirect internal NAND requests for WiiWare.) [I will note that if you use DVD-R loading, the disc drive runs at half-speed; with Sonic Colors, the only major issue I noticed is a stutter on level load, which results in the regular music and boost music being out of sync.]

DIOS MIOS is slightly more problematic. The DOL SDK accesses the disc hardware directly, so games have to be patched in memory in order to load from a USB HDD. In every single case I've seen, there's no real difference other than maybe a level loads faster than from disc (and this isn't even consistent when running from disc, either). Also, audio streaming doesn't work, but that just means games that use it won't have music.

Nintendont and Devolution, on the other hand, should NOT be allowed:

• Both run GameCube games in Wii mode, which has a higher clock rate.
• Nintendont compatibility is spotty, and many games have problems.
• Devolution is filled with bullshit DRM.

EDIT: Besides the aforementioned issues, what about for consoles that have the same game available on disc and as a download?