There were always tons of shovelware/terrible games on the NES ... like those Friday the 13th games (lol). There were plenty of times where I game I rented wasn't even worth the rental fee on the NES, lol. I actually grew up with an NES so I remember. There were great games of course but there were plenty of terrible ones too.
The thing was it was still a far better system than the Sega Master System because even though the Sega had some pretty cool 1st party games, it had virtually nothing else. Nintendo was the system to play if you wanted the most games in every genre, not just Mario.
Somewhere between there and now, Nintendo somehow turned their console model into the Sega Master System model, while handing away the "NES role" to Sony/MS.
The Wii/DS formula works great, when there is no Apple/Google to disrupt it and you can come reliably come up with an exciting new gimmick every couple of years. Unfortunately that is not so easy to pull off and competing against Apple/Google and the smartphone is honestly harder than competing against Sony/MS directly. People are not willing to give up their smartphone for anything, it's their *life* and kids gravitate to tablets like a fly drawn to a light.
