I find the SNES controller acceptable, but not wonderful. The Mega Drive controller always felt the best to me, especially the 6 button version.
So, I feel like my perspective on SNES is way different to you all. My experience with the SNES library has been a long and drawn out one.
When I was young, there was just me and my mum in our immediate family. As a young, single mother, my mum didn't have a lot of money to spend on video games and things, but she was always quite generous with what money she did have.
I got a Mega Drive when I was about 5 or so, which would put this around 1993/1994. It came with a handful of games (Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Mega Games 1 I think) which I played to death. I didn't even know about the Super Nintendo.
A couple of years later, my mum comes home from work with a Super Nintendo, which she either board second hand from a colleague at work, or was given. Either way, I now have a Super Nintendo and a selection of games - Street Fighter II, Prince of Persia, Flashback, Starwing and Super Tennis. Shortly after, I get given Donkey Kong Country 3 by one of my mums friends.
Now, I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but compared to the Mega Drive my SNES got way less play. I loved Starwing and Donkey Kong, and Super Tennis and Street Fighter got the occasional play, but I couldn't get into Prince of Persia at all. The main reason the SNES got little play though, was that the games were pricy. I bought all my games at the time from a 2nd hand market stall, and Mega Drive games could be acquired for £10-15, whereas a lot of SNES titles could go for double that. Thus, I acquired lots for the cheaper console, and never bought a single game for the SNES besides those starting ones.
I did play other games mind. My cousins picked up a SNES after a while, and they had Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Donkey Kong Country, all of which got playtime. They borrowed Zelda at one point, which I remember not thinking much of at the time (this was a little way into the PS1 era by this point). We also borrowed Super Metroid from a friend, which we gave up on after the boss that guards the bomb power up killed us. We weren't very good.
Some way into the Gamecube era, my mum comes home from her new job with a carrier bag full of SNES games. She's not sure that I'd want them, as my old console are played pretty rarely by me at the time, but the bag contains some gems. Besides some guff like Striker, FIFA and Super Morph, and a selection fo stuff I don't care for like Another World and Populous, it also contains Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country. Shortly afetrwards, a game shop in town is clearing out old SNES titles and I pick up Super Punch out and Unirally for cheap. Around this time, the Wii has come out, and Virtual Console has peaked my interest in retro titles again. And the rest is history.
My SNES collection has been filled out over the years very slowly and gradually, but it's finally starting to have some of the classics in. Most of them, I experience other ways first - on Virtual Console or on GBA. I'm still missing a few of the obvious classics (Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kogn Country 2) and that's not including the RPGs, most of which never even came out in Europe. I've only recently starting branching into the 3rd party classics such as Super Castlevania, Super Ghouls n' Ghosts and Super Probotector.
I'm a big fan of the SNES, but it took a while for me to get there, and most of it was in retrospect - logn after the 3D systems took over. I first played Mario World when Mario 64 was out, first experienced A Link To The Past around the launch of Ocarina of Time, and experienced Super Metroid long after Metroid Prime hit the scene. That said, some of those £20 games on that old market stall in the 90s don't look so bad nowadays. I wish I could go back and tell 9 year old me that the Asterix and Speedy Gonzales games he's buying are rubbish, and he should really try out this Wild Guns thing on SNES, but alas, what can you do?
