It should be pretty obvious which version you're using. NTSC-U is primarily designated for USA, Canada, and Mexico, PAL is generally for Europe, and NTSC-J is for Japan. Some game discs have more exotic region differences (Korean, Australia) but usually you can just worry about if your game is NTSC-U or PAL. Dolphin should also tell you (it shows flags in the GUI). At any rate, NTSC-U and PAL saves are fairly easy to convert, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll try to get thing the save sometime within the next 24 hours (shouldn't take me that long, but hey, it's my week off, might get lazy :p or busy...) and post the link for you.
And yes, save states can mess up a game. Be sure to check the MD5 hash like I said. If your dump is corrupt, then having a clean save doesn't help much.
And yes, save states can mess up a game. Be sure to check the MD5 hash like I said. If your dump is corrupt, then having a clean save doesn't help much.