I'm going to go against the grain here. You said that I should take into account how authentic the port was, but I'm going to partially ignore that.
I would consider many of Konami's NES ports to be some of the best arcade ports. Most were recognizable as being very close to their source material, but Konami also didn't feel compelled to stick to certain elements that didn't work in the originals (e.g. the really horrid jumping animation in AC Contra) and frequently added additional content (Life Force's completely new stage) to flesh out the game further.
I'd go so far as to say that these games could be argued to be BETTER then their original AC versions despite the limitations of the hardware. I'd certainly say Contra and Super Contra were.