Pads ... I only use the official EU 1st version.. i.e. the one I got with it, a bit strange to use going from PS3/ & 4 pads back to an old digital pad

I use a Action Replay 4M Plus cart myself but I know there are tons of variants of it

Not 100% on exact games (all of my games are patched anyway and did not fancy re-burning them all without patches just for testing) but can name one because I ended up guiding through the process to get a game working for another user, the game was Alien Trilogy just a page or so back

It is a good one to test with if you want to try patching it yourself or try without and with patching, just remember to rebuild the sector fields with CD-Mage before burning after the Hex edits