RichterSnipes: Oh have they! ZSNES has turned into the butt of many jokes in recent years. If you ever decide to get back into it, start at least at Snes9x. It's a comfortable emulator to work with.
You ain't doing it properly unless you're using the best-existing CRT filters! :)
But seriously, it's a bad suggestion for someone who hasn't emulated anything in a long time or ever. RetroArch requires a ton of configuration to get to your liking. You can do amazing things with it once you've gotten used to it, but it's not the best place to start.
Retroarch's GUI has simplified massively in recent months, especially in the nightly builds. Also, you can download the cores easily now. They're currently working on a mouse driven GUI and have one based on the mobile UI too. The old checkered green UI is out. As of current versions they're using an XMBC/KODI style menu. Not much hard to that.
As for CRT filters, I was born in 1991 so by the time I was playing NES and SNES, TVs weren't so crap any more and I don't get the raving over the bulging scanline filters.