You posted before I put mine up, but I guess a tl;dr version of my post won't hurt:
1983 launch to 1985: Carts are the only option
1986-87: Hooray disks! Lots of good games!
1988: But everybody is pirating them and Nintendo is being dicks about licensing. Back to carts then!
Edit: Heh, I did it too. I totally forgot about the story of the ROM shortage, thanks Pingvin!
Between the two of us I think we covered the bases.