This is super valid. I grew up with these games, and I have heavy nostalgia for them, but they were heavily limited by the hardware of the time. I think some series have had really good modern translations, like the New Super Mario Bros series which has a play-style very akin to the originals, but in a modern format and graphics. I would also consider Mario Maker an example of this as well. But these examples are generally rare and more often there has been a full shift to 3D gaming (Mario Galaxy/Odyssey etc) and side-scrolling is a thing of the past, because a lot of those traditional NES game styles are kind of limited and garbage compared to modern games. I still have my NES, and it still works, but I don't exactly find myself breaking it out all the time to play as opposed to playing a modern game in a modern format.