I'd ignore a mister entirely unless you have zero interest in every using a real cartridge and that's that, it's just a rom loader. A summecart64 is the most cost effective but also most capable kit on the market to run games off a cartridge as a good way to test things out, but also even if you had a library to play english translated games, lost prototypes, pet projects and more.
If you're starting out fresh, and have a tolerance for time, I would kind of track along the years the games came out to a point because if you move too far up (late 90s into the 00s) it may feel jarring going backwards due to advancements in quality.
I'd call some basics from Nintendo must try things like Mario 64, Pilotwings, Wave Race, all 1996 stuff and into the following year with Mario kart too. When it comes to 3rd party games, Capcom only put 2 out, but both are worth having even if they were on Ps1 too for the novelty of it, but also due to some quality enhacements both have in some respects. Konami put a number of solid games out, franchise titles, but also some unique experiences too. Lucasarts didn't fail to impress with their Star Wars or Indiana Jones games, all worth a look. Rare is an island of quality being 2nd party then and you can either love or hate it when it comes to their overkill collectable nonsense with games more often than not, but on the one they didn't Conker, or their FPS games, they were peak quality stuff either way.
The thing is it's hard to throw too many recommendations because taste has a factor, but also genre interest. The system was fairly heavy on quality racing titles, and also king of the couch co-op in general but really with WWF and WCW wrestling titles.
