I wish there was more info when choosing a core.

On a handheld, I get to choose an emulation core for each game, most of them are too slow.

It would be good to have some idea which ones will actually work.

Pointless random story; Mom asked if we could play Legend of Zelda together over the internet, said she wanted to try video games.

It took a while to get going, & to get our two sessions connected. Alas we could never get the various weird-workaround silly ways people had gotten controller-hand off to work. I should file a bug.

RetroArch is amazing. The do-all multi-tool of retro gaming. Well. Do almost-all.

I know this probably won’t help in your case, but if you both happen to have Nintendo Switches and have a Nintendo online subscription you get access to a bunch of NES and SNES games and can play them online together.

They even have a mode for people to watch and “clap” while one person plays a single player game.

It’s expensive to buy all that from scratch and closed to only the games that Nintendo has put on the service (Zelda is there I believe), however it “just works.”