A: I'm playing on Nintendo 64 and I have been since february 2014. I had been playing on Wii VC until then.
A: Look at the top of my splits
A: There's a little bit less text on japanese however the english text moves faster and so they pretty much cancel each other out. The intro to the game is about 2.7 seconds faster on japanese because Peach doesn't talk. The red coins make a different (better) sound. The cannon star in JRB has a box in US but not in JP. The JRB painting is a pic of a ship in US but bubbles instead in JP.
A: Yes, it's an original Nintendo controller, for Bowser throws however, I switch to a Hori Minipad so I don't wear out the control stick on my normal controller. I now have a SteelStick that I bought as an early access tester.