Well, it may sound dumb, but I'll recommend all of them. Wiimote + Nunchuk, Classic Controller (either or both depending on what you want to do, both are great and fit different niches with their little differences) and GameCube. Heck, if you find a Wavebird controller in good shape and decent price, grab it before it flies away!
Like, that's one of the best things about the Wii. There's so much choice about controllers, specially if we add homebrew stuff over the retail/official available games/software.
Many Wii games have either GC or CC support, some have both, and because of how different each controller is you can get very different experiences with each game. Some games are fun with just a Wiimote, sometimes they're better with a Nunchuk attached. Some games are more fun with motion controls, others are better played with a more typical controller.
And with emulators, you can mix up quite a bit. For Super Nintendo games, a Classic Controller is the most comfortable to me because of the resemblance, but for simpler systems I may grab my GC controller so I save up the Wiimote's batteries.
That said, I never played GC games with something that wasn't a GC controller; never tried, never had any interest in doing so, mostly because I already have the perfect match.
With time, if you enjoy what a Wii has to offer, you'll end up wanting at least one of each to play, or at least that's how I felt about it as time went on. I even got a Wii Balance Board for some of the games.
First party controllers should be recommended always over third party ones, specially aftermarket ones, those can be pretty damn bad. For example, I bought a Nunchuk from Aliexpress to try, and the Analog Stick was terrible, it only registered eight directions like if it was a D-Pad.
Between that and that it didn't really recognized the pressure you put to it all that well, it was pretty much useless. At least I could use it for spare pieces... (The Stick for example has the same mold as real Nunchuk/CC/GameCube controllers, so you can use it to replace worn out sticks from good controllers).
Oh, and please make yourself a favour and get some decent rechargeable batteries. Not only they're much better for our pockets in the long run, they're also a lot better for the environment.
A bit random, but yup, I know. That said, the Jesus in my name has nothing to do with religion
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I never bought a Wii U myself, but we had one here for a time. I looked to get one myself some years ago, but I lost the interest as the switch entered the picture. I like some of the games it has, specially Super Mario 3D World, that one's fantastic and I hope it gets ported to Switch.
For the Wii U, though, most people I've talked to agree that the Wii U Pro Controller is the preferred method to play, unless the game makes good use of the Gamepad or it's only compatible with it. Of course, different games have different controller support, so it's always handy to have a variety of controllers, kinda like Wii.
