Review of official SNES Mouse Emulation

Published on 10 Oct 2025

Recently, Mario & Wario was just added on Super NES Nintendo Classics app, which is great news, it means Nintendo officially released that game outside of Japan for the first time ever. I have played that game a bunch before, but I admit my previous experience was on unofficial emulation and it’s been a while. So I played it on Switch 2 using the Joy Con 2’s Mouse mode, and in theory it should feel great, but it didn’t. I’ve played Drag x Drive, Super Mario Party Jamboree’s Mouse minigames and Welcome Tour, and I fully believe the Joy Con 2 is fine as a mouse, though it’s not perfect for a few reasons like the form factor being not as practical as I’d like, but that’s kind of part of the appeal too.

So to have an idea of what’s going on, I went ahead to play both Mario Paint and Mario & Wario on real Super Famicom hardware + official SNES Mouse, and compare to how it is on Switch 2’s SNES Nintendo Classics app: My thoughts are definitive, it’s definitely wrong on Switch 2. Something is weird with the mouse acceleration and sensitivity.

Mario Paint

To give an idea of what I did, I played Mario Paint, and set up the in-game Mouse Speed to Fast, as I simply think it’s too slow on original hardware otherwise, and then I played the Gnat Attack minigame. While it is the point for gnats to actually be annoying to swat down, it’s still very much doable, and it’s a good sensitivity test, even if it’s definitely just based on my personal feelings, it still gives a decent starting comparison point, as I did the 3 stages mostly fine.

Then I played Mario Paint on Switch 2 using both a Joy Con 2 as well as a USB Mouse, and messing with the Mouse Speed settings is already weird (by the way, the app seems to ignore the Switch 2 system Mouse Speed setting), as Medium seems close to the High setting on original hardware, and High is way faster than original hardware. I played Gnat Attack with both Medium and High settings and I just constantly miss the gnats, the mouse acceleration is just straight up weird. I either overshoot or undershoot, it’s really weird to explain, but it really does not correspond in terms of feeling and I just cannot seem to get used to it. I’m not sure if it’s a polling issue or not, but it’s off.

Mario & Wario

I did Mario & Wario’s Level 2 on original hardware with the High speed setting with Mario, because it’s the first level with scrolling, and it means there’s a lot of mouse movement to do, particularly on the slower side compared to Gnat Attack, and turns out I did finish the 10 stages mostly fine, sometimes I did overshoot a little but nothing that particularly felt wrong. The game is unfortunately at 30 FPS, it’s not the best feeling, but it’s how it was coded at the time.

Then I went to Switch 2, and while I did mostly okay, it still felt off, it’s kind of harder to explain and show off, but the mouse acceleration still felt weird. It didn’t feel as good, it’s really just some kind of weird momentum that doesn’t feel predictable. Then I did the same thing but with the Low speed setting with Mario, and it went a whole lot better. I finished the 10 stages of Level 1 & 2 like that. It’s odd because Low speed initially did not feel good but it ends up being closer to the High speed setting on original hardware, at least that’s how it feels to me.

So if you want my recommendation, it is to stay on Low speed setting for Mario & Wario.

Joy Con 2 Mouse Detection Problem

There is another huge problem in regards to the mouse, the application is pretty aggressive when it comes to switching between SNES Controller and SNES Mouse, in fact, too aggressive for its own good. I couldn’t initially figure it out in an earlier version of this review until someone on Bluesky told me what the specific problem was (thank you to Duck Von). This especially happens when I try to play relaxed on my bed (believe me for mouse games it’s usually fine), when I move the mouse, sometimes I get it to a different position and then I don’t move and try to click a lot which are not recognized at all. Eventually, the app complains that I’m not using a mouse, even though I actually do. It takes until I move it like a mouse as the optical sensor sees it that it is finally recognized as a mouse.

This is a huge problem to me, because it means that sometimes I move the mouse and then it isn’t recognized as one for some reason and then I die in Mario & Wario because the clicks aren’t working. I can actually reproduce the problem reliably if I try by just rotating the Joy Con 2 to the side slowly on a flat surface, and then it just doesn’t see that it is set up as a mouse even it factually is. This needs some rework, because that can seriously be annoying.

Hopefully these problems can be fixed in the future, because it’s really not right to me overall. I will definitely play more Mario & Wario on Low speed as this review still gave me an excuse to check more settings and compare.