I wouldn't say I am "far more sensitive" to loading in general than most people. I don't mind the loading when you start the game. I don't mind the loading in between stages, even if it were or weren't there in the original version. I don't even mind long loading times on early disc-based systems.

But if the game in question (not counting emulation and PS2/PSP overhead) would fit inside the console's RAM space more than three times over, and still has to make the screen darken and pop up a "Loading..." message every time you press left or right on the d-pad to select your character, is just like a repeated slap in the face along with the words "we couldn't be bothered to do a good job on this". It's something that I haven't come across anything similar to compare with in any other compilation disc I have ever played.

Can I try my best and ignore this and just enjoy the games? YES.

It was not my intention to start a thread to rage about a 5 year old compilation as if somehow that is going to change anything. It is what it is, and all we can do is either deal with it or not play it at all. However, the intention of my previous post was more to bookend the rest of the thread, to follow up with my own experience comparing the two. I did not expect the PS2 version to be better, people already said that it wouldn't be, but having played both I would definitely recommend it over the PSP version.