Oh, this should be fun. I personally love the black box series quite a bit. Sure, a lot of them don't age the greatest, but there's definitely some great titles in this collection. I find them to be really fascinating just because of how early they are. It's cool to see previous arcade developer Nintendo slowly but surely forming their new identity as a console manufacture.
5. Donkey Kong 3 - My favorite game of the Donkey Kong trilogy. Rather than doing another platformed, Nintendo did something completely different and made a really fun shooter with the Donkey Kong character.
4. Popeye - A pretty faithful port of the arcade game. I personally find Popeye to be more fun than any of the Donkey Kong games.
3. Mario Bros. - The best of the arcade series. Mario Bros. is a really great game and one that I revisit quite often.
2. Balloon Fight - Basically, it's Joust but much more fun to play and with more personality. Plus, Hip Tanaka makes almost any game better.
1. Super Mario Bros. - I kinda wanted to put something above Mario just because it's too obvious, but it's obvious for a reason. Super Mario Bros. is an expertly crafted platformer that hasn't aged a bit since it was first released. And personally, it's the one I go back to the most of the original trilogy.
This was a challenging list to put together, as there were many games that I wanted to include (Ice Climber, Excitebike, Hogan's Alley, Kung Fu, Slalom, Pinball) that didn't make the cut. However, I'm pretty satisfied with the five titles I chose. I'd also like to give an honorable mention to Ice Hockey, which is not a black box game but looks a lot like one and is one of the best sports games the NES has to offer.