Were the animations tied to the framerate? Or can you emulate the game at 60 fps just fine?
They totally were, unfortunately. Still worth it to avoid the aggravation from seeing the slow moves/spells/summons during battles play out, especially when grinding for mats/levels etc.
On topic, I faintly recall the original VIII PC CD version having a glitch where the speed of certain elements in the game was tied to how fast your PC was at that time.
On a Pentium II/III machine for example, Squall's Renzokuken was next to impossible to Perfect because it was just flashing too bloody fast. I had a mate who played the PC version first, and when he moved to the PSX version, he was surprised at how much easier it was to get the perfect Renzokuken on the PSX version of the game.
Same thing goes for Zell's Limit Breaks, and any other limit break which required quick and accurate button presses.