True, but that said I don't recall ever seeing any shitty shovelware games with the seal on it. It was a nice way to easily find the cream of the crop.

A lot of titles that are now considered classics were initially released without that seal of approval because the publishers didn't want to pay Nintendo's licensing fees. Check out the Nintendo v. Tengen case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tengen_%28company%29#NES_games

And a lot of awful games did have the Seal: http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/w20-01.htm

All licensed games had that seal. It was nothing more than a marker that the standard licensing process, which is not particularly different from console to console, was followed.