I use RetroArch for everything 16-bit and older these days (unless there's no RA core for the system on the platform I'm using). Haven't played SNES for a while, but I have been using the SNES 9x cores. For most games you can just use the most recent core, but there are a handful of games that work better with one of the older cores.
The first F-Zero I played was the GBA version, which I also recommend.
Your comment seems to be trying to disagree with me, but I think you wrote almost the same things that I wrote in the comment that you're replying to: