Sadly the most promising recent run was that Axel one I botched. I think I got the timer up in the 180s, but things fell apart. I think I barely managed to hit 200 in the XBLA version when I was playing that a lot.
I don't think there's really a secret to it, just a matter of practice and gradually getting better. I think the gains come from a variety of places:
- Limiter cutting consistently. After a while this is just muscle memory.
- Learning the customers. In the macro sense, it keeps you moving "forward" and helps spread your pickups throughout the map. In the micro sense, knowing which way you need to face before you pick up a customer is huge.
- Remembering which customers you picked up. The biggest example for me is the group of three customers at the Bus Terminal that go to the Tennis Court. Sometimes if I go long stretches without going to the Bus Terminal I forget which of those are remaining. This can go wrong in two ways: either I go for a Tennis Court customer that isn't there anymore, or I prematurely pick up the signal customers. Sometimes mid run I also try to remember if I picked up the two roof customers yet, although I don't think I've ever actually messed that up. But it'd be really bad if you did.
- Learning to tailspin. This lets you orient yourself in the right direction much faster when picking up customers.
- Getting better at avoiding collisions. I'm still kinda bad at this. But being able to maneuver your way out of a bad situation is important too, which I'm better at. Trying not to panic when bad shit happens (which it will), eh, I'm inconsistent there.
- Getting close to customers without scaring them away. One micro-optimization I've been using is to slightly tailspin towards them. They seem to fear the front of the cab much more than the back. I don't know much of a difference this really makes, but if I'm picking up over 100 customers per run, shaving half a second (just to make up a number) would add up to a lot of extra time over the course of the run.
- Downtown routes. I'm pretty sure the ideal path to Sky Bank and CT Hospital is on the outside, but the arrow doesn't make this obvious. I used to try to go through the middle and I'm pretty sure that's slower and more collision prone. I haven't actually checked it, but I feel like I add more seconds to the clock when I go to those two instead of the other downtown locations, leading me to believe that path is a pseudo-shortcut.
Sadly I also think luck plays a big role in getting a good run. If you get really good customer patterns you waste far less time between customers. Lookout Tower has been annoying the hell out of me lately for that reason, seems to be the worst offender of "here's a lot of customers but none of them are what you want." Also everybody wants to go to KFC but nobody ever leaves from there, seems sketchy.
I got $60k with BD Joe yesterday, kinda just messing around since I never used him much. I actually like the way he handles but the width of his cab definitely comes to bite you sometimes. It's specifically noticeable on the highway when you're trying to squeeze past semis; I've triggered a couple jackknifes with him and that practically never happens with anybody else. I'll probably upload that run later, takes like 2.5-3 hours (low tier internet plan, I'm cheap).
Emulator seems perfectly fine. I haven't played on DC in several years but I haven't noticed any differences or bugs. Low system requirements too, my PC is like 3 or 4 years old, i3, integrated graphics. I assume with a better graphics card I could record at a better framerate but in terms of actual gameplay it's perfectly smooth.
EDIT: video links
Axel run cut short:
https://youtu.be/vNsAWvaZeQQBD Joe $60k:
https://youtu.be/1pDHSHzj18YEDIT #2:
Axel $66k:
https://youtu.be/ckHk8yVYIV8