>>9772187
The answer is because those NES games are doing so little.
>3 simultaneous roadside obstacles at most
>2 simultaneous other cars
>Tons of flicker
>No parallax line scrolling
Compare to Mega Drive racing games, which can have fully polygonal roadside obstacles, realtime scaling sprites, and far more simultaneous racers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwbzga9P3XU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdi_PL7v3Tg
The Master System also had far more going on, which makes sense as it was TWO TIMES more powerful than the NES.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPoMviKmtkA
By comparison, NES racers were interesting spectacles, but not compelling as games, as with much of the NES library.