Same here - I learned/used commodore HW with cathode ray timing. I thought that's how all of the others worked too, it's not like NES is wildly less powerful than a C20/C64, and was a little disappointed that this wasn't how it was done.

It really seemed to go out the window much earlier except for arcade machines before cathode-ray went out of style. I never really saw it widely used except NES on future platforms. If anything, the recent reboot with Wii (any screen, trigger off IR LEDs on top of it for direction) is a revival.