Super Mario Bros won't recognize my controller

I’m having a weird problem with every Super Mario Bros ROMS with the Nestopia core (haven’t tried another NES core) : my Buffalo SNES USB controller does not work. The weirdest part is that, on several ROMS, there is also other games on the cartridge, like Duck Hunt or World Cup, and I can chose which game to boot with the controller, and the other games work. Only SMB does not work. I tried other ROMS like SMB2 and SMB3 and they work perfectly.