I too used to think the NES wasn't all that until I decided to educate myself. In fairness to its detractors, most of the better games are the late-era lesser-known titles and a lot of the games that people have endlessly insisted are stone-cold-classics over the years really aren't all that fantastic. There's just a lot of ignorance surrounding the system, even among hardcore NES triumphalists. Like, none of the Castlevania games would make my top 30 action-platformer list for the system. I think the OG Metroid is real hard to go back to. Nintendo's own stuff for the system isn't really too polished outside of the Mario games, mostly because they really wound down game development before the system had been mastered by developers - most of their better-known stuff was released in the 'still expermenting' phase. Also, a lot of the best games are actually licensed, which throws people off, because everybody tries to warn people away from those (it's true that the worst garbage is typically licensed).
List of good, lesser-recommended games:
Kabuki Quantum Fighter
Batman
Mitsume ga Tooru
Hi no Tori
New Ghostbusters II
Bio Miracle Bokette Upa
Gradius 2
Moon Crystal
Don Doko Don 2
Gumshoe
Gimmick!
Little Nemo
Kick Master
Metal Storm
Shatterhand
Little Samson
Zanac
Abadox
Faxanadu
Crystalis
etc. etc. etc. on my laptop so don't have my romlist handy. It's a great system.
