When comparing ZSNES vs Rogue Legacy, the Slant community recommends Rogue Legacy for most people. In the question“What are the best low-spec PC games?” Rogue Legacy is ranked 60th while ZSNES is ranked 61st. The most important reason people chose Rogue Legacy is:
Rogue Legacy has an interesting mechanic where each play-through is with a new descendant from the previous character, and they each have various traits and disabilities they inherit that effect how they play.
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Pros
Pro "Compatible" with most games
ZSNES has been in development since the 90's, and in that time has been fixed to run the vast majority of SNES games smoothly.
Due to it's "accuracy", it can run roms that most other emulators would break. Not because the emulation is broken, but because the roms are broken.
Pro Fast playback of ROMs
ZSNES is hand-optimized for x86, so it will run incredibly smoothly even on older computers.
Pro Built-in video capture
Gameplay can be recorded and saved as both raw or lossy files. Quality settings can be tweaked in zmovie.cfg file.
Pro Games can be saved at any point
Pro Multiplayer support
Games can be played with other people over TCP/IP network.
Pro Built-in support for cheat codes
ZSNES supports Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, and GoldFinger cheat codes.
Pro Built-in audio capture
Game audio can be saved to a .spc file.
Pro Can speed-up and rewind games
Pro Lineage affects gameplay in an interesting way
Rogue Legacy has an interesting mechanic where each play-through is with a new descendant from the previous character, and they each have various traits and disabilities they inherit that effect how they play.
Pro Tons of replayability through procedurally generated levels
Rogue Legacy has procedurally generated levels, which means every time a player restarts the game it will be a different experience that plays out making for a ton of replayability.
Pro You don't lose purchased loot
The upgrade system in Rogue Legacy works by spending the money you gained in the last level (you lose all your money when you start a new one), with upgrades passing down through generations by being either upgrades to the family manor, or family heirlooms. This way even when the player dies (which happens a lot) the player will not loose their purchased items allowing them to continue without starting completely over.
Pro Lots of upgrades to buy
The upgrade system in Rogue Legacy works by spending the money you gained in the last level (you lose all your money when you start a new one), with upgrades passing down through generations by being either upgrades to the family manor, or family heirlooms.
Cons
Con Laughably out of date
Not only was it abandoned over 10 years ago, the strides that other emulators have made in the same time is astounding.
Con Inaccurate compared to competition
ZSNES sacrifices emulation accuracy for speed (relative to e.g. Higan emulator). Sound emulation is a particularly large weakness.
Con Abandoned
While no official statement on discontinuing the software was made, last progress update was posted in 2007 and now seems highly unlikely that any further updates should be expected.
Con Repetitive gameplay
Upgraded monsters are just palette shifts of old monsters that throw more projectiles. Even with the upgrade tree and armor/runes, the game always feels the same.