Last week at a convention I managed to buy Mario paint with the snes mouse for dirt cheap!
Right before buying the thing I thought.."wouldn't it be so much cooler when I could use an optical mouse on my snes ?"

So I bought it just so I could start that project and today (after 2 evenings of complete failure) I sort of got it working.
The only thing I need to tweak is the fact that I have to use an external +5V power supply for actually powering the optical mouse, but apart from that I got it working  

for the record = The last photo says "It's working!" in dutch  

What I would like to see is an adapter that plugs into the snes and has a USB connection on the other end. This way you could plug in your mouse. It would be really cool to see this, but I don't know how much of a demand it would have as a product.

Awesome project, but did you happen to see this?  

https://www.hyperkin.com/snes-hyp...

I did see the hyperkin mouse but this is way more fun  

A USB mouse would be doable, but requires some extra coding and parts  

That's a fun looking project. I've thought of doing it for years. That being said, I have a Hyperkin mouse already, hahahaha

Awesome idea and please perfect the technology so we can all look forward to using a more functional mouse on the console.