I think that might be survivorship bias talking. We tend to forget all the shovelware and only remember the gems.
I remember playing a ton of awful shareware games as a kid, on floppies and disks packed with a few dozen each. Same thing later on, bringing a game home from the store only to realize I'd chosen poorly.
And it's easy to get a bit jaded after years of experience and look back with a rose tint. I loved the hell out of that junk as a kid, because it was still the best stuff I'd yet seen and I had time to spare. Today I'm a little pickier.