Skull Island

This year we saw the release of the first King Kong game since the adaptation of the Peter Jackson movie back in 2005 (which was an absolute belter might I say).

We’re also witnessing a battle between 2 Shovelware Titans. Skull Island: Rise of Kong vs The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

A bigger battle than Kong vs Godzilla.

Which will wear the crown of Worst Game of 2023?

Seeing the recent gameplay of the new Kong game made me angry. Especially as a Kaiju fan. But it also reminded me of the Shovelware problem that we’ve faced for so many years now.

Defining Shovelware

Shovelware – low budget, poor quality, lots of em.

The term implies that care for quality of the game was lacking but the quantity of said software was being added “by the shovel” in bulk.

You’ll often find that these games are panned by critics on any video game review sites.

But yet they sell.

And it’s because they’re often primarily targeted to the lowest common denominator. Kids!

You’ll see what I mean a bit further on.

Shovelware absolutely includes movie tie-in games. You will often find these publishers paying huge money for the licencing of these games and paying soul crushingly low money for the developers who will adapt them.

I’m a sucker for the movie tie-in games of the PlayStation 2 days poor or great. I’m talking the likes of the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers game and Chamber of Secrets. I’ll consider some of these exceptions to the rule because they ended up being pretty high quality games.

When we head into the days of the Nintendo Wii you will find that the majority of the titles for the console were licensed low quality crap.

These games would be disguised as unique titles but would often be copy and pasted gameplay and level layouts. Which brings me to the case of a company named Blast! Entertainment that loved a little asset swap.

Quantity Over Quality – Blast! Entertainment

Blast! Entertainment released games primarily for the PS2 and Nintendo Wii consoles and are best known for absolutely terrible licensed games like Little Britain: The Video Game.

Yep, that was them.

Their games were primarily aimed at children that wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a good and a bad game. They would instead focus their attention on the games cover and the licensed property that the game was based on.

Blast! were known to release games that were just reskins of some of their previous games. If they weren’t reskins they would be poorly developed games packed with minigames.

Ninjabread Man was the primary source for most of their reskinned games. They managed to release Trixie In Toyland, Casper and the Ghostly Trio, Casper’s Scare School: Classroom Capers, and An American Tail all with the same gameplay and level layouts.

Notice anything about most of those games?

They’re either heavily targeted at kids or they’re movie adaptations (some of them match both criteria).

Blast also went on to release video game adaptations of Beverly Hills Cop, Jumanji, and Lassie. Which were again, panned by critics.

Nintendo & Shovelware

Nintendo has often been plagued by Shovelware to the point where it’s almost unbelievable.

The Nintendo Wii was the victim of so much shovelware that a large percentage of the consoles library is practically the same game.

From games based on M&Ms candy that were reskins of the Carnival games, to games created by Blast! like Trixie In Toyland & Ninjabread Man.

Nintendo eShop

It doesn’t end at the Wii either.

Have you looked at the Nintendo eShop on your Switch lately?

The eShop has an abundance of Shovelware games that include the likes of Gorilla Big Adventure, League of Champions Soccer and just about any game made by Pix Arts.

It blows my mind that this is a thing when it seemed to have disappeared during the WiiU days, has Nintendo’s quality control of their online store given up?

Whilst Steam has the same problem, they do a far better job at hiding these cash grabs than Nintendo does.

All it takes is to navigate a couple of pages into the Nintendo Store and you’re guaranteed to find one.

Shovelware Variety Hour

Finally, I’ve talked as much as I can about the Shovelware phenomena so I’d like to refer you to a series I found while researching the topic.

Shovelware Variety Hour by Scott The Woz. Here you’ll find just how many of these titles there are in the world.

And with that, I hope you enjoyed reading about this subject whether you knew of the term or not, I hope you learned something.

Here’s hoping that the failure of both Kong and Gollum leads to something changing in the world of game development.

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