I suppose from a business point of view, you would want the NES SF to be a bit old by the time you release NES MK, because the market is ready for some new material. Very logical, in fact I'm surprised the pirates were smart enough to realize this.
When it comes to making money they actually seem to be really smart, I mean hell, as a kid I probably would have gone for their flashy logo's over the non-pirated, less intersting looking games. They're just retarded game programmers.
Also, I never noticed the white border around the cartridge art. That's a really good time reference.