well for PSOne games, there's no difference I believe between the launch and pre-removal models.

My gf played FFIV on on PS3 and the only problem was the water being weird... it's hard to explain but it would like flash every other step. Not a gamebreaker, she beat the game like that, but it is a little weird.

Also played FFV, no problems so far.

I played FFVI on my PSP, through my PS3 via Remote Play, and there was no real difference - still the same inconvenient load times from the original version