I've been doing some more tests. I thought it might be a cache problem so I turned off the RAM caching but that didn't seem to help. I also thought it might be a save file problem as I noticed that, even with RAM caching off, the game accesses the memory stick after coming back from sleep but even switching memory stick and running a new profile didn't seem to help.

So it seems really weird to me that people like Rapier Racer aren't having the same problem but others are to different degrees. I'm really at a loss now to figure out what's happening. I can't imagine it's a faulty UMD or anything - I would have thought the chances of that would be slim to none.

Anyone else have any more ideas? Is there anyone else here with similar problems who have noticed any connections with any features or anything?