I had my '96 Maxima (VQ30DE, the smaller sibling) lower intake manifold off about a year ago to replace a knock sensor that's buried in the "V", and refresh gaskets and I also got all the injectors rebuilt. It definitely did not look that clean on top of the valves, but it wasn't terrible either. It had about 220k at the time. I noticed some oil pooling on top of the valves, but the car did set a couple months while I took my sweet time to do the work. Oddly enough, the engine still burns nearly zero oil between changes, I ran a 10K OCI last time with no need for top-up. Engine has 250k on it and still running strong. I have under valve cover pictures somewhere on the site from 2-3 years ago, it was pretty darn clean considering the age. These are one of Nissan's best engines IMO.