Maybe Higan/BSNES are like this, but if you've ever used SNES9x/zSNES or similar, you can see that we've been able to run playable games since the 90s.
Those also have some significant tradeoffs between emulation accuracy and speed, though because they were focused on playable games at speed, not necessarily perfect accuracy.
The later emulators have tried to do low level emulation to get accurate cycle counts and whatnot to make it as close as possible to a real SNES.
I understand it caused some issues for other emulators because fan made patches and such were sometimes coded to work with the quirks thereof, but I agree that I never noticed such when playing games.
Those also have some significant tradeoffs between emulation accuracy and speed, though because they were focused on playable games at speed, not necessarily perfect accuracy.
The later emulators have tried to do low level emulation to get accurate cycle counts and whatnot to make it as close as possible to a real SNES.