If you have any Nintendo DS system and a mere $14.99, you can now get you a sickeningly vast collection of Intellivision games. Intellivision Lives! has more than 60 games on it – more than my collection of Intellivision games as a child – and it includes half a dozen games made but never released more »

The history of the Wii and DS has been a bag of mixed nuts. On one hand they are two of the most successful consoles for this or any generation. On the other hand both consoles have suffered from lackluster games and piracy. The term “shovelware” is used almost exclusively to describe the number of bad games available for the Wii and DS. It’s these reasons why Namco Bandai’s vice president of sales Olivier Comte thinks the Nintendo bubble has finally burst.

Not all shovelware is completely bad.

Sure, games that fall into the shovelware category, like Chicken Shoot and Elf Bowling, are often designed to purely to generate quick revenue. And yes, the quality of shovelware is more often than not rather atrocious. But that doesn’t mean that the mere existence of it is entirely bad.

Not only is shovelware a videogame tradition but its proliferation is a positive sign for gamers. Below are three important reasons why shovelware games are actually good…