With the exception of NES, GameBoy, and SNES emulators... most Homebrew is completely useless in favor of actual roms, or the homebrews just aren't worth the trouble to even read about.
Moonshell is maybe the one and only non-emulator app to have. If you want to draw, then the Rom Art Academy allows you to do just that and also teaches you how to draw, as well as have background music, and none of those touch screen input bugs you get with homebrew. Don't get me wrong, Colors is nice, but every now and then it will bug out on you. The only real downside to Art Academy is that like real art, you're not allowed to undo paint strokes. However there is a program around that lets you extract your images you draw and save them as image files on your computer to be shared with others. If you're into music editing then you can download Korg. If you want a cook book then there are interactive cook book/trainers. There are language trainers and maybe a whle mess of tool-like applications made into commercial roms that trump half-assed efforts of homebrew.