The NES was extremely dominant among the gamer population with home consoles at the time, which was pretty small. Some gamers may have already owned an Atari, or ColecoVision, or MagnaVox, or other console and did not feel the need to buy an NES. However, the NES was so popular that people rushing to buy it for their children were disappointed that it was sold out. You never read or heard about this phenomenon happening with any other video game console at the time, because it did not happen at the same scale as the NES.
Of course the NES did not sell as well as the PS2 or Wii, because by the time those consoles released, the general population of gamers had greatly increased, naturally more people would buy those consoles. The same goes for the Switch outselling the Wii and WiiU, the general population of gamers has increased. It would not be entirely surprising to see the Switch 2 outsell the Switch for this very same reason, assuming the global economy improves enough to encourage luxury spending on the same level of when the Switch released.
Personally, my gaming began with a Super Nintendo. I never had SEGA or Sony consoles growing up. Nintendo up until the Xbox came out, then I had Nintendo and Xbox. And PC. Then the Switch released and it collected dust for so much time I decided to sell it and just keep my PC and Xbox.
I don't feel like I missed out growing up, but I do enjoy being able to play games on those platforms I did not play. Some of them were good, but I find a lot of them are subpar compared to what Nintendo and Xbox had.
Rest in peace.