Monday, September 06, 2004
Hiya, I wrote this article for VGpub, thought I may as well post it here too so I can get your guys feedback from it too. Enjoy!
Now I’m sure a lot of you saw the title of this article and thought, “wait a second, you’re doing a tribute to the same people who brought us those zany Mary-Kate & Ashley game?” You damn right I am! Acclaim has been around in the market ever since the NES days, and sure they had their own fair share of good and bad games, probably with the bad outweighing the good obviously. However, any publisher that has been around that long deserves its own recognition for what once was one of the top third party publishers on the market.
I know a lot of you are saying good riddance to Acclaim and to many of their not-so-great games that you recall, but this company has been shaping up quite wisely this generation, and it’s just unfortunate to see them go under since they had a few big name titles coming out this fall. So pull up a chair and join good ‘ol Uncle Gruel as he takes a look back at the rise and fall of Acclaim.
The NES Generation
Almost all of today’s gamers remember that Nintendo’s classic NES console controlled the 8-bit gaming market single-handedly, now what many people do not know was Nintendo’s ultra-tight rules on third party publishers. Nintendo made most of them sign agreements where they only published games exclusively for the NES, and there was another clause where they would only let publisher only release five games per year.
There was one way around this rule where Nintendo let two publishers create subsidiary labels so they can release another five games a year. Subsidiary labels are like how companies like Take-2 Interactive (Rockstar, Gathering, and Global Star) and Vivendi Universal (Universal Interactive, Blizzard, Interplay, Sierra) control several publishing names that they either created or simply just bought out. One of the publisher that Nintendo let around this rule was Konami, where they invented their “Ultra Games” label. Can you guess what the other successful 3rd party to get granted a subsidiary label? You got it, Acclaim was the lucky contestant, and “LJN” was their alternate publishing name that continued on midway into the 16-bit generation.
You heard me right, during the NES golden years, Acclaim was one of the top two third parties. How did they get so successful you might ask? Licensing, Acclaim shelled out the big bucks for a lot of the big name licenses the public loved. It didn’t matter how good or bad the actual game itself was, unfortunately back then the public didn’t use the logic “don’t judge a book by its cover” and Acclaim racked in millions from hit arcade ports like Arch Rivals, Smash TV, and the trilogy of Double Dragon ports. They also got control of the WWF license at this time and released a couple of fair wrestling games when the geniuses at Rare were actually developing for them. Those aforementioned titles are actually some of my NES favorites, but it is an understatement to say that Acclaim/LJN didn’t release their own fair share of forgettable games on the NES. Anyone remember the atrocities that were Friday the 13th, Total Recall, Bart vs. the Space Mutants, and the God-awful Bill & Ted games. But for all the bad Acclaim released, they did manage to muster out several fondly-remembered classics on the good ‘ol NES, and it ended up being a very profitable period for them as a result.
The 16-bit Gaming Wars
Acclaim did more of the same in the glory days of the SNES and Genesis. It was hard to track an original title out of Acclaim those days, as almost all their games from that era were from licensed properties or arcade ports. This was when the arcade was in a big boom, and Acclaim just happened to have the home console publishing rights to the first two NBA Jam & Mortal Kombat titles from the folks at Midway. Acclaim also released four games based off the WWF license that netted them a boatload of money. And hey, when you got those licenses under your hand, there was no way the company was going to lose money. Those eight titles alone made up most of Acclaim’s profits in the 16-bit era.
Unfortunately, Acclaim released a lot of big stinkers that year that ranged from mediocre at best to gut-wrenching awful. To the shock of no one, most of these were a port of almost every big name movie that was released from the year’s 1992-1995. For all you collector’s out there take a look through your game library right now and tell me if you see any copies of Cutthroat Island, Batman Forever, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Revolution X, True Lies, or Terminator 2 in your collections. This period was when the public didn’t start to gobble up licensed properties like they use to, but when time Acclaim realized this it was far too late.
PSone vs N64……….Sega-who?
By the time the 32/64-bit console wars erupted, Acclaim lost the console publishing rights of the then ever-popular Mortal Kombat titles as their own creators at Midway threw their hat in the ring at the home console market. However, they still retained the rights to the “NBA Jam” name on console markets, except now Acclaim themselves developed them. Acclaim supported the Playstation with dozens of titles. Unfortunately most of them were not all that great. There were lots of disappointing licensed titles to no ones shock in the forms of Street Fighter: The Movie, and several South Park titles. Acclaim also released what went down as one of the worst games of all time in the form of Fantastic Four. Acclaim still went the way of publishing a majority of licensed properties, but by the end of this era they saw most of their licensed properties being snatched up around other companies.
It was around 1997 that Acclaim started focusing publishing most of its titles for N64, and a lot of their titles were superb classics that went on to become million-sellers, like the first pair of Turok titles, a first-person shooter based off the comic book property that Acclaim also owned. Yes, Acclaim also ran a comic book label, but I’m not getting started into that travesty. Acclaim released a bunch of little gems like Iggy’s Reckin Balls, Forsaken, & Shadowman. This era was also when Acclaim started focusing on publishing a lot of sports titles, most of them exclusively on N64. Their first N64 football title, NFL Quarterback Club ’98, actually sold really well, and was favored in the media to EA’s Madden 64. After a couple of years though, their sports franchises never really did all that well, with Quarterback Club being on the losing end of sales within a couple years, and upstart series like NHL Breakaway and the returning NBA Jam folding up after only two years on the system. However, their All-Star Baseball franchise really came into its own and ended up as top baseball game on the N64 when it was all said and done.
In 1999 however, Acclaim lost its most vital license of them all, the WWF license. They were really picking up steam too after the releases of WWF Warzone & WWF Attitude, which sold in huge numbers due to the WWF getting a big boom in business in 1998. The games themselves were actually pretty good too. However, for whatever reasons they were, the WWF dropped Acclaim as their game publisher in favor of THQ after their license expired in November 1999. Acclaim still stuck in the wrestling games business and picked up the rights to make games for the third ranked wrestling company, ECW. Regrettably, ECW was a couple years past its prime and in its dying days, as the organization only lasted two more years into 2001 before filing for bankruptcy, and Acclaim was only able to release two games that didn’t sell that great due to a lot of wrestling fans being unfamiliar with the ECW stars and an aging gameplay engine that just wasn’t holding up that well anymore. The WWF license was Acclaim’s last big license they had and was one of the key downfalls to Acclaim.
Its last generation
Acclaim entered the generation ruled by the PS2, GCN, and Xbox with very few of the king licenses they had before, and now they had to rely on making original titles for a change. Believe it or not, Acclaim actually did release some damn good addicting games, most notably the pair of Burnout titles that focused more on its spectacular crashes than the races themselves. The series became so popular that EA bought the rights to the franchise. Acclaim later released a little-known sleeper hit called Speed Kings on all three platforms which was basically Burnout on motorcycles, but unfortunately the game didn’t sell as well as its car-driven brother.
As far as Acclaim’s big name licenses went, they did have a couple tricks up their sleeves when they somehow managed to snatch the rights to a few Sega Dreamcast games to release on the PS2 and GCN. Acclaim published Crazy Taxi, Headhunter, & 18 Wheeler on the PS2. Of those three, only Crazy Taxi went on to sell well, and was one of Acclaim’s very few PS2 titles that ended up with a “Greatest Hits” label.
What about Acclaim’s awesome sports line-up from the last generation you ask? Acclaim released one version of Quarterback Club in 2001, but by that point EA and Sega controlled the football video games market, and Acclaim’s title did horrible in sales which ended up with Acclaim shelving its eight year football franchise. Sega gave up on hockey games by this point, and only released one edition of NBA Jam on consoles which got heavily mixed reviews. However, Acclaim’s All-Star Baseball series still did well, even against intense competition from EA, and Sega, they still managed to release an installment of the game each year for four straight years, with this year’s 2005 edition looking to be the last installment for good.
Acclaim was really starting to gain steam in its extreme sports branch of games. With its Dave Mira titles being the top rated BMX game on the market, and Aggressive Inline coming out of nowhere and shocking everyone with its many innovations it brought to the market. It was just too bad Acclaim milked the extreme sports genre for all its worth by releasing a trio of titles (ATV Quad Power Racing 2, Paris-Dakar Rally & SX Superstar) that were mediocre at best, and then their was the mess that was BMX XXX. Acclaim ditched the Dave Mirra license in the BMX games and gave the game a new X-rated makeover by allowing gamers to create-a-player feature that allowed females to ride topless, uncensored music, and was one of the first games to have its voice dialogue drop the F bomb at will. Much to Acclaim’s disadvantage, this new makeover ended up with a lot of retailers refusing to carry the game, and the poor reviews that poured in for the game didn’t help bolster sales that much either.
BMX XXX was one of the downfalls that led to Acclaim and as previously stated it couldn’t recover from losing the WWF license. After losing the ECW license, Acclaim took the last route available and started a new franchise dubbed, Legends of Wrestling which featured mostly retired greats from wrestling’s past like the Road Warriors, and Hulk Hogan. Even though the series managed to stick around for two more sequels, none of them didn’t sell all that great, due to its problematic controls, and mixed reviews from the media. Hell, the last game titled, Showdown was only released a month and a half before Acclaim filed for bankruptcy and it was filled with so many glitches and bugs that you could tell Acclaim wanted to get the game out before they shutdown their offices for good.
Aftermath
Ultimately, the past several years of bad sales have just been too much for Acclaim to handle, and the public has been quite aware of how bad Acclaim has been doing for the past couple of years too. Last week, Acclaim finally filed for bankruptcy, the bad kind where they have to liquidate all of its assets. It’s such a shame too since this has probably been their best era as far as ratio of good original content has been. Acclaim actually had several more titles planned for release this year, with two of them heavily being heavily anticipated.
One of the games is The Red Star that is based in the ruins of Russia where players can control one of three genetically enhanced soldiers in a series of combat-action levels that bares a resemblance to a 3D version of Smash TV. The game was actually near completion and ready to ship this fall. The other title was called Juiced a street racer that featured cutting edge graphics, online play and the ability to race for pink-slips. Juiced was actually complete and was suppose to be shipped later this month, but now things look different.
There were also a couple of other different games Acclaim had slated to ship this fall. Worms: Special Edition was also complete and originally slated to come out this September for Xbox. Its sequel Worms: Forts Under Siege was also suppose to come out this October. Finally, Acclaim had one other big title to ship this October called 100 Bullets, a game based off a DC comic book series of the same name. The game has intense action combat that looks incredibly similar to the smash-hits Dead to Rights, and Max Payne.
This looked to be like Acclaim’s best fall release schedule yet, and with so many games already completed/near completion it is likely to see Acclaim go the route of 3DO last year and put up its properties for sale in an auction. Hell, I’ll put up my own prediction for who buys what based on the results of last year’s 3DO auction.
Juiced – Will probably be purchased by Namco, and renamed “Street Racer Syndicate 2”
All-Star Baseball – This will be purchased by Microsoft, and left permanently unused much like how Microsoft is currently doing to its High Heat franchise it bought from 3DO in its auction last year
Worms – I can see a big publisher like Atari or Vivendi picking up this franchise and releasing its planned installments under a $20-$30 budget price point
Red Star – I’m imagining this big action release will probably be picked up by the EA conglomerate
100 Bullets – This edgy action game would be perfect for the Rockstar games subsidiary of Take-2, they bought Red Dead Revolver from Capcom after they shelved it and turned it into a great game, and I believe this game has that potential too
Ok, with all that out of the way, I’m going to have to say that I will miss Acclaim. They were really starting to come into their own the past couple years with Acclaim straying away from its former cash-cow license properties and aiming in a direction with a lot of good original content. Acclaim realized this though when it was too late, and I sincerely hope that other publishers pick up some of these very promising titles that have a lot of potential. Buh-bye Acclaim, this Bud’s for you!
Now I’m sure a lot of you saw the title of this article and thought, “wait a second, you’re doing a tribute to the same people who brought us those zany Mary-Kate & Ashley game?” You damn right I am! Acclaim has been around in the market ever since the NES days, and sure they had their own fair share of good and bad games, probably with the bad outweighing the good obviously. However, any publisher that has been around that long deserves its own recognition for what once was one of the top third party publishers on the market.
I know a lot of you are saying good riddance to Acclaim and to many of their not-so-great games that you recall, but this company has been shaping up quite wisely this generation, and it’s just unfortunate to see them go under since they had a few big name titles coming out this fall. So pull up a chair and join good ‘ol Uncle Gruel as he takes a look back at the rise and fall of Acclaim.
The NES Generation
Almost all of today’s gamers remember that Nintendo’s classic NES console controlled the 8-bit gaming market single-handedly, now what many people do not know was Nintendo’s ultra-tight rules on third party publishers. Nintendo made most of them sign agreements where they only published games exclusively for the NES, and there was another clause where they would only let publisher only release five games per year.
There was one way around this rule where Nintendo let two publishers create subsidiary labels so they can release another five games a year. Subsidiary labels are like how companies like Take-2 Interactive (Rockstar, Gathering, and Global Star) and Vivendi Universal (Universal Interactive, Blizzard, Interplay, Sierra) control several publishing names that they either created or simply just bought out. One of the publisher that Nintendo let around this rule was Konami, where they invented their “Ultra Games” label. Can you guess what the other successful 3rd party to get granted a subsidiary label? You got it, Acclaim was the lucky contestant, and “LJN” was their alternate publishing name that continued on midway into the 16-bit generation.
You heard me right, during the NES golden years, Acclaim was one of the top two third parties. How did they get so successful you might ask? Licensing, Acclaim shelled out the big bucks for a lot of the big name licenses the public loved. It didn’t matter how good or bad the actual game itself was, unfortunately back then the public didn’t use the logic “don’t judge a book by its cover” and Acclaim racked in millions from hit arcade ports like Arch Rivals, Smash TV, and the trilogy of Double Dragon ports. They also got control of the WWF license at this time and released a couple of fair wrestling games when the geniuses at Rare were actually developing for them. Those aforementioned titles are actually some of my NES favorites, but it is an understatement to say that Acclaim/LJN didn’t release their own fair share of forgettable games on the NES. Anyone remember the atrocities that were Friday the 13th, Total Recall, Bart vs. the Space Mutants, and the God-awful Bill & Ted games. But for all the bad Acclaim released, they did manage to muster out several fondly-remembered classics on the good ‘ol NES, and it ended up being a very profitable period for them as a result.
The 16-bit Gaming Wars
Acclaim did more of the same in the glory days of the SNES and Genesis. It was hard to track an original title out of Acclaim those days, as almost all their games from that era were from licensed properties or arcade ports. This was when the arcade was in a big boom, and Acclaim just happened to have the home console publishing rights to the first two NBA Jam & Mortal Kombat titles from the folks at Midway. Acclaim also released four games based off the WWF license that netted them a boatload of money. And hey, when you got those licenses under your hand, there was no way the company was going to lose money. Those eight titles alone made up most of Acclaim’s profits in the 16-bit era.
Unfortunately, Acclaim released a lot of big stinkers that year that ranged from mediocre at best to gut-wrenching awful. To the shock of no one, most of these were a port of almost every big name movie that was released from the year’s 1992-1995. For all you collector’s out there take a look through your game library right now and tell me if you see any copies of Cutthroat Island, Batman Forever, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Revolution X, True Lies, or Terminator 2 in your collections. This period was when the public didn’t start to gobble up licensed properties like they use to, but when time Acclaim realized this it was far too late.
PSone vs N64……….Sega-who?
By the time the 32/64-bit console wars erupted, Acclaim lost the console publishing rights of the then ever-popular Mortal Kombat titles as their own creators at Midway threw their hat in the ring at the home console market. However, they still retained the rights to the “NBA Jam” name on console markets, except now Acclaim themselves developed them. Acclaim supported the Playstation with dozens of titles. Unfortunately most of them were not all that great. There were lots of disappointing licensed titles to no ones shock in the forms of Street Fighter: The Movie, and several South Park titles. Acclaim also released what went down as one of the worst games of all time in the form of Fantastic Four. Acclaim still went the way of publishing a majority of licensed properties, but by the end of this era they saw most of their licensed properties being snatched up around other companies.
It was around 1997 that Acclaim started focusing publishing most of its titles for N64, and a lot of their titles were superb classics that went on to become million-sellers, like the first pair of Turok titles, a first-person shooter based off the comic book property that Acclaim also owned. Yes, Acclaim also ran a comic book label, but I’m not getting started into that travesty. Acclaim released a bunch of little gems like Iggy’s Reckin Balls, Forsaken, & Shadowman. This era was also when Acclaim started focusing on publishing a lot of sports titles, most of them exclusively on N64. Their first N64 football title, NFL Quarterback Club ’98, actually sold really well, and was favored in the media to EA’s Madden 64. After a couple of years though, their sports franchises never really did all that well, with Quarterback Club being on the losing end of sales within a couple years, and upstart series like NHL Breakaway and the returning NBA Jam folding up after only two years on the system. However, their All-Star Baseball franchise really came into its own and ended up as top baseball game on the N64 when it was all said and done.
In 1999 however, Acclaim lost its most vital license of them all, the WWF license. They were really picking up steam too after the releases of WWF Warzone & WWF Attitude, which sold in huge numbers due to the WWF getting a big boom in business in 1998. The games themselves were actually pretty good too. However, for whatever reasons they were, the WWF dropped Acclaim as their game publisher in favor of THQ after their license expired in November 1999. Acclaim still stuck in the wrestling games business and picked up the rights to make games for the third ranked wrestling company, ECW. Regrettably, ECW was a couple years past its prime and in its dying days, as the organization only lasted two more years into 2001 before filing for bankruptcy, and Acclaim was only able to release two games that didn’t sell that great due to a lot of wrestling fans being unfamiliar with the ECW stars and an aging gameplay engine that just wasn’t holding up that well anymore. The WWF license was Acclaim’s last big license they had and was one of the key downfalls to Acclaim.
Its last generation
Acclaim entered the generation ruled by the PS2, GCN, and Xbox with very few of the king licenses they had before, and now they had to rely on making original titles for a change. Believe it or not, Acclaim actually did release some damn good addicting games, most notably the pair of Burnout titles that focused more on its spectacular crashes than the races themselves. The series became so popular that EA bought the rights to the franchise. Acclaim later released a little-known sleeper hit called Speed Kings on all three platforms which was basically Burnout on motorcycles, but unfortunately the game didn’t sell as well as its car-driven brother.
As far as Acclaim’s big name licenses went, they did have a couple tricks up their sleeves when they somehow managed to snatch the rights to a few Sega Dreamcast games to release on the PS2 and GCN. Acclaim published Crazy Taxi, Headhunter, & 18 Wheeler on the PS2. Of those three, only Crazy Taxi went on to sell well, and was one of Acclaim’s very few PS2 titles that ended up with a “Greatest Hits” label.
What about Acclaim’s awesome sports line-up from the last generation you ask? Acclaim released one version of Quarterback Club in 2001, but by that point EA and Sega controlled the football video games market, and Acclaim’s title did horrible in sales which ended up with Acclaim shelving its eight year football franchise. Sega gave up on hockey games by this point, and only released one edition of NBA Jam on consoles which got heavily mixed reviews. However, Acclaim’s All-Star Baseball series still did well, even against intense competition from EA, and Sega, they still managed to release an installment of the game each year for four straight years, with this year’s 2005 edition looking to be the last installment for good.
Acclaim was really starting to gain steam in its extreme sports branch of games. With its Dave Mira titles being the top rated BMX game on the market, and Aggressive Inline coming out of nowhere and shocking everyone with its many innovations it brought to the market. It was just too bad Acclaim milked the extreme sports genre for all its worth by releasing a trio of titles (ATV Quad Power Racing 2, Paris-Dakar Rally & SX Superstar) that were mediocre at best, and then their was the mess that was BMX XXX. Acclaim ditched the Dave Mirra license in the BMX games and gave the game a new X-rated makeover by allowing gamers to create-a-player feature that allowed females to ride topless, uncensored music, and was one of the first games to have its voice dialogue drop the F bomb at will. Much to Acclaim’s disadvantage, this new makeover ended up with a lot of retailers refusing to carry the game, and the poor reviews that poured in for the game didn’t help bolster sales that much either.
BMX XXX was one of the downfalls that led to Acclaim and as previously stated it couldn’t recover from losing the WWF license. After losing the ECW license, Acclaim took the last route available and started a new franchise dubbed, Legends of Wrestling which featured mostly retired greats from wrestling’s past like the Road Warriors, and Hulk Hogan. Even though the series managed to stick around for two more sequels, none of them didn’t sell all that great, due to its problematic controls, and mixed reviews from the media. Hell, the last game titled, Showdown was only released a month and a half before Acclaim filed for bankruptcy and it was filled with so many glitches and bugs that you could tell Acclaim wanted to get the game out before they shutdown their offices for good.
Aftermath
Ultimately, the past several years of bad sales have just been too much for Acclaim to handle, and the public has been quite aware of how bad Acclaim has been doing for the past couple of years too. Last week, Acclaim finally filed for bankruptcy, the bad kind where they have to liquidate all of its assets. It’s such a shame too since this has probably been their best era as far as ratio of good original content has been. Acclaim actually had several more titles planned for release this year, with two of them heavily being heavily anticipated.
One of the games is The Red Star that is based in the ruins of Russia where players can control one of three genetically enhanced soldiers in a series of combat-action levels that bares a resemblance to a 3D version of Smash TV. The game was actually near completion and ready to ship this fall. The other title was called Juiced a street racer that featured cutting edge graphics, online play and the ability to race for pink-slips. Juiced was actually complete and was suppose to be shipped later this month, but now things look different.
There were also a couple of other different games Acclaim had slated to ship this fall. Worms: Special Edition was also complete and originally slated to come out this September for Xbox. Its sequel Worms: Forts Under Siege was also suppose to come out this October. Finally, Acclaim had one other big title to ship this October called 100 Bullets, a game based off a DC comic book series of the same name. The game has intense action combat that looks incredibly similar to the smash-hits Dead to Rights, and Max Payne.
This looked to be like Acclaim’s best fall release schedule yet, and with so many games already completed/near completion it is likely to see Acclaim go the route of 3DO last year and put up its properties for sale in an auction. Hell, I’ll put up my own prediction for who buys what based on the results of last year’s 3DO auction.
Juiced – Will probably be purchased by Namco, and renamed “Street Racer Syndicate 2”
All-Star Baseball – This will be purchased by Microsoft, and left permanently unused much like how Microsoft is currently doing to its High Heat franchise it bought from 3DO in its auction last year
Worms – I can see a big publisher like Atari or Vivendi picking up this franchise and releasing its planned installments under a $20-$30 budget price point
Red Star – I’m imagining this big action release will probably be picked up by the EA conglomerate
100 Bullets – This edgy action game would be perfect for the Rockstar games subsidiary of Take-2, they bought Red Dead Revolver from Capcom after they shelved it and turned it into a great game, and I believe this game has that potential too
Ok, with all that out of the way, I’m going to have to say that I will miss Acclaim. They were really starting to come into their own the past couple years with Acclaim straying away from its former cash-cow license properties and aiming in a direction with a lot of good original content. Acclaim realized this though when it was too late, and I sincerely hope that other publishers pick up some of these very promising titles that have a lot of potential. Buh-bye Acclaim, this Bud’s for you!
Comments:
Post a Comment
