I want to know if I have to show the emulator I'm using and if so how would I do that? I heard that using the SNES as opposed to an emulator is actually faster for response time, is this true? Thank you guys for your time!

You should use either Snes9x 1.53 or 1.54 or Bizhawk. There is not a requirement to actually show the emulator window. And yes, a console has less input lag than an emulator by an average of two or three frames.

Thank you