It’s not looking good, @rook
I tried 4 copies from different regions as well as 3 different psx bios’ as well with no luck. The one thing I didn’t try was a PAL Bios with a PAL game. Current game saves won’t work with PAL games as they are pulled from NTSC games so that’s a bummer.
I might set up a PAL version of FF8 to see if that would work. The only catch is that you’d have to play it again from the beginning. There’s also the risk that it still might not even work once you get to the Lunar base. Might not be in English as well…
I can only reach out to the community at this point. Does anyone have a copy of FF8 that loads past the Lunar Cry/Base cut scene? I’ve read online that there are some changes you can make to your emulator but those tactics won’t help in this case. 