There are better ports of Smash TV to consoles, but this one works surprisingly well.
You are a contestant in a crazy game show set in the far flung future of 1999. Your goal is to shoot dudes, and LOTS of them, for FABULOUS prizes! You work through a level room by room, running around shooting enemies. And there are LOTS of enemies in Smash TV. Most all of them don't shoot back, but the game sends endless numbers of enemies at you, which is where the game's difficulty lies. And lemme tell ya, this game is killer hard. You die a lot.
Speaking of death, this game has no continue system, so when you run of lives, the game is over; that's it. Instead of letting you continue to get a fresh set of 3 lives like many arcade ports do, the game is just very generous with extra life pickups. It's definetly key to grab these whenever possible and start racking up the spare lives.
So the big question is: how do you play Smash TV with an NES controller? There are actually two methods of control; one is good and one is no good. Basically, you can play with one or two controllers. Basically, with the 2-controller method, you hold one controller in each hand, sideways. You hold them so they sort of look like Wii Remotes. The left-hand D-Pad is for moving, and the right-hand D-Pad is for firing.
This works pretty well once you get used to it. Sometimes hitting the diagonals it a bit tricky, but it mostly depends on what shape the D-Pads on your controllers are in.
The alternate control method is a 1-controller mode. The game basically plays like Time Pilot: you move with the D-Pad and fire with the A or B button, but you can only shoot in front of you. Unplayable, my friend.
Smash TV gives you a variety of weapons with which to dish out pain. Your default weapon is a basic machine gun, but you can also pick up a spread gun, a bomb gun (ie a gun that spits out bombs rapid-fire), and several other weapons. When you pick up these weapons, they don't last long, so you have to make the most of them while they're there.
As far as graphics go, the graphics obviously can't compare to the arcade version, but they still look good. The framerate is also rock-steady, despite the number of enemies on-screen at once. The game also emulates the original Smash TV theme in 8-bit style, and they even got the announcer to say, in a very staticy voice, "Good luck! You'll need it!"
At the end of the day, you can do better than the NES version of Smash TV. They released Super Smash TV for the SNES, as part of Midway Arcade Treasures for the Xbox, and it's available on Xbox Live Arcade. But, this game comes cheap, under $5 even, and at that price it's worth picking up.