[NEWS] Donkey Kong Jr. and others join Nintendo Switch Online roster

My immediate thought goes to the SNES games we're not getting, but I see what Nintendo is trying to do. They're looking at games that haven't gotten the attention they perhaps deserve, or are less appreciated.

...though that could well be because they're overplayed, underwhelming and not actually good games in their own right.

It's a losing battle, I'm afraid, considering the sort of functionality Nintendo is painstakingly baking into these games for addition to their Online service. A lot of work potentially wasted, and certainly overshadowed by the popularity of mobile gaming in competing markets.

Many consumers feel this represents a bad value, because... reasons?

I surmise that even for people who are going to be ever subscribed (let alone the others), owning the content is reassuring, not owning it the contrary.
In light of Steam's success, most Steam users do probably skirt it to read the conditions of purchase upon getting Steam games.

For the record, I would much rather own the games than not, even in digital form. In fact I already do own most or all of the titles, because I've purchased every NES game available on the Wii/Wii U versions of the Virtual Console on top of owning carts of very nearly all of them. But $20/year to have access to almost 50 NES games, as just one part of the overall service, seems really very fair (it's less than $2.00 per month) and is heading toward the "Netflix for gaming" that so many claim to want. Admittedly, the pricing looks bad compared to "Free, because I pirated everything," which is how too many people now determine retro game value, but Nintendo's model seems to be quite reasonably priced, especially considering having access to a little over half that content would have cost as much as 3 or 4 years of membership. And also looking at the online functionality being added so that you can play games with friends. I really need to play through Super Mario Bros. 3 with some of you, actually, now that it's so easy to do so...