Ask 411 Games Special Edition 01.23.12: The (Licensed) Story of Acclaim Entertainment
Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 01.23.2012
From the heights of Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam and their birth as a splinter company from Activision to the lows of ECW and BMX XXX and their eventual decline, 411's Mathew Sforcina takes a look at Acclaim Entertainment in a special edition of Ask 411 Games!
Well hell ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ask 411 Games! I am your host, Mathew Sforcina, and let's hope this doesn't go too badly, shall we? Not much to report on the gaming front, as I was wrestling and working for most of the week. But now I'm heading into more free time, so yay gaming again!
But anyway, let's get this thing going, shall we?
But first, we go with the awesomeness that is the BANNER~!
Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to ask411games@gmail.com.
Guest 5150 is the reason for this special edition.
Great Read Mathew.
2 How about a Rise and Fall of Acclaim down the line? :)
Acclaim Games. The name itself is a punchline, a joke. The irony is obvious, a company named for a word that means praise and commendation that only produces crap. Hell, the only game company that is a bigger joke is LJN, and they were PART of Acclaim! This company is the reason that every gamer knows that a licensed game is crappy until proven otherwise. It's a crappy company that never did anything good, right?
Well… Depends on how much credit you want to give it. It published some very influential games, and did help launch a couple of big franchises out there. But then again, they just published them, so they don't count, surely?
To arrive at an answer to that question, you have to know the history of the company. And that begins with another company, Activision. Namely, it's management structure in the mid 80's.
That rather ordinary looking man is one Greg Fischbach, in the mid 80's. Greg began his career as a lawyer, moving into video games rather slowly. He began as a US Attorney, before setting up his own law firm which specialised in entertainment law and liaisoning with Hollywood and other media outlets as an advisor. He began as a consultant with Activision, before moving up the ranks there until he was made President of Activision International between 1983 and 1986.
But in 1986, Greg decided to form his own company, along with his business partner, James 'Jim' Scoroposki. And the first thing that came about was the name. See, Activision was founded by some people who left Atari. And when they formed their own company, they came up with a company name that just so happened to be alphabetically before Atari, namely Activision. And then Accolade was formed by former Activision staff members, and it was ahead of both. So, when Greg and Jim left to start their own brand, since they didn't want to be in the middle of lists (which ruled out "Scoroposki & Fischbach Entertainment" or anything), they decided on either being at the start or the end of the lists. So despite Zydeco being right there (and Zynga years away) they went with Acclaim. Absolute Entertainment ended up trumping them both when it was a third company formed from ex-Activision employees. (And all of them would probably look at companies like 1st Playable Productions today and be all "Wait, we can use numbers?").
Anyway, the company was formed in 1987, and immediately became very successful, doing $40 Million in business within 6 months, reportedly. There were two main reasons for it, and they both would be major reasons for the company's rise and eventual fall.
The first is that they gambled on the NES. It's easy to look back now and think that of course you should support Nintendo, that you'd want to publish on the NES, that's a no-brainer, right? But there was still some hesitation about throwing the hat into the NES as a third party developer, a rather new concept in video games. Companies remembered the crash of a couple years before, and were hesitant about signing up again to a possibly doomed concept. And yet more were scared off by Nintendo's rather strict rules, wherein you had to sign an exclusivity deal with Nintendo, any game had to be bought in at least 10K copies, and you could produce 5 games maximum a year.
But Acclaim saw that Nintendo was onto something, that cartridge gaming was the future, and was one of, if not the first American company to jump on board and sign up with Nintendo. But what would they produce? This led to the second reason for their success, which was that Acclaim went for the licensing deals.
Acclaim would seek out and buy the rights to produce games for whatever was hot and big at the time. WWF Wrestling, X-Men and The Simpsons all had their beginnings in video games due to Acclaim. Although it would lead to derision and problems later on, it worked for a good while, as the company was able to sell games based solely on the brand name, rather than having to build a game's identity from scratch. A game about Jed the Electrician battling the evil Baron Von Barry in the Tomtom Galaxy to save the fair Lady Lindsey is a game that no-one knows. You have to sell it loud and hard over and over again so that people know your "Shock & Awwww" game. But X-Men? WWF? The fricking Simpsons? Everyone knows them. Just mention the name, and people will buy it since they love those guys! And you are off and running.
Of course, you kinda need games to sell. You may have the license, but that doesn't actually do anything. Just gives you a name and a likeness to use. You still have to make the game. And Acclaim didn't do that. They got others to do it for them. Now, this does bring up an interesting point. Take, for instance, the very first WWF game (all right yes, there was PC game that no-one remembers but we're talking consoles here.) WWF Wrestlemania.
Given the technical limitations of the era, you'd not expect a WWE '12 or even a No Mercy… Hell, not even a Fire Pro Returns level of quality, sure. But it's still not exactly a great game. Chalk that up to Acclaim being horrible, right?
Yeah, except that Acclaim didn't make the game. They just published it. It was made by Rare. You know, the company that made several well loved and memorable games. This occurred with other titles as well, as beloved or at the very least respected companies made games for Acclaim (and LJN, which we'll get to in a minute). And yet, if they suck, they were an Acclaim failure. If Acclaim published a good game, then people don't even acknowledge them.
For instance, as well as licensing American Pop Culture icons, they also did bring across some Japanese games that had no American publisher. Double Dragon II and the Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble game series were both published by Acclaim. And yet, no-one thanks them for that. Instead, they get forgotten, or they get accused of being ‘lucky'.
But the company, prior to it's biggest successes, did do stuff that was both revolutionary and, for a while lead the way in gaming. They went public in 1988 which was quite a feat given Wall Street at the time. They had a European office, and in fact had offices all over the world. And they acquired studios and kept them separate, which wasn't something that was all too common at the time.
But one company they did buy was LJN in 1990, which was an interesting case in of itself.
LJN was, like Acclaim, a company that ran with licenses and hired other people to make their games. This led to such mind twists as Karate Kid, widely regarded as one of the worst NES games of all time…
Was actually made by Atlus. Atlus, for those coming in late, is a company that is one of those Japanese companies that isn't as well known as a Capcom or a Sega, but is very well respected. And yet, they made THAT.
But anyway, Acclaim bought out the company in late 80's, but kept it a separate entity entirely, all to screw Nintendo. OK, maybe not screw per se, but certainly circumvent. Remember that ‘5 games a year rule' from before? Well, that applied per band. LJN was technically a different brand. So that way, Acclaim got to release lots more games. Nintendo dropped that rule in the early 90's, but LJN continued it's path of publishing licensed games for cheap money, with not one single game ever made by LJN not being a licensed one of one form or another (the closest they got was Spirit of Speed 1937, a 2000 Dreamcast racing game, which just had a bunch of licensed cars from 1937 in it.)
Of course, Acclaim's short run of ‘success' was overshadowed totally in the early 90's, when it landed arguably it's biggest success, as it got the rights to publish Midway's home console releases. Which meant that Smash TV, NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat, all of those huge hits, when they made it to the home consoles, Acclaim published them and got a lot of coins out of it.
It would, however, be the stone around their neck that led to the company collapsing. See, for all negative feelings, all the jokes, the comedy, the fact remains that Acclaim was making a lot of money off the licenses. Both the pop culture, and the arcade ports.
By the time the mid 90's rolled around, both became an issue. Because as 95 and 96 flowed on, the consoles became more and more sophisticated and popular. Suddenly gamers were buying more and more games and playing them at home. But that's good right? Acclaim had that market sewn up with all their ports!
But those ports required arcade games that were popular and successful. As the arcade market began to die out, so did the flow of popular games that people wanted home versions of. Now they just wanted the home console games, no more. But hey, Acclaim had all those pop culture licenses, that'll hold, right?
Except that they didn't. As the home consoles began to replace the arcades, and home consoles became the norm, consumers were suddenly getting picky and possibly even thinking about their purchases. They were now not just blindly buying a game because WWF was on the cover, they were now asking ‘Is this a good game?' first. Which, if you have a good game is fine, if you don't… You're kinda in trouble.
And Acclaim didn't notice, and spent a good few years clinging too long to the old model. And while NBA Jam Extreme and WWF In Your House didn't do too badly (both being made by Sculpted Software, which Acclaim bought in 1995), they certainly failed to sell like the hotcakes Acclaim was used to. Batman Forever, however, was a major bust for the company, being very poorly received and selling about as well.
The company was now at a crossroads, and was, for the first time, forced to actually attempt to create their own properties. Licenses didn't sell anymore on their own, the games had to stand up on their own. Sure, they still went ahead with the licenses that were still working (X-Men, WWF), but they also began to make non-licensed games. The only game in that first batch that did well was Turok, which did become a hit and was ‘surprisingly good for an Acclaim game' as many a young person said at the time.
But as the new millennium dawned, things once again looked up. They acquired the Mary-Kate and Ashley brand, which was a throwback to the old days, in that the games could be ‘bad' all they liked, they still sold very well. They also got South Park, which was a bit of a coup. But then, they needed these after the WWF split.
See, WWF and Acclaim had seemed to be as close knit as two media companies could be. But then, during the Monday Night Wars, WCW had a deal with THQ, which then got an obscure start up Japanese company, The Man Breeze, to make their games. The Man Breeze soon changed their name to AKI Corporation, and produced some fantastic wrestling games, culminating in WCW/nWo Revenge.
And they just didn't match up to what Acclaim was producing in the sales.
This led to WWF suddenly jumping ship in 1999, going to THQ. Acclaim was left with a hole to fill. And this led to the oddest part of their history, as Acclaim got in bed with ECW.
Acclaim had always sold itself as an ‘entertainment company'. They produced hardware (for gaming), they made comics and books (mostly centered around their games) and other minor spin offs. The president of the company once managed the Steve Miller Band, Acclaim was a media company! That's the only explanation for the deal Acclaim had with ECW. When Acclaim had a wrestling game engine with no use, they were stuck. WWF had bailed. The obvious choice of WCW wasn't interested. That left #3, ECW. Heyman was very happy to cut a deal, but there was a problem. Heyman had no money (shock of shocks) and was slightly over a barrel at the time. So Acclaim had the leverage, and they used it to it's fullest. Acclaim advanced ECW some cash, and in exchange began to make the game… And they got 15% of ECW.
This never came up while ECW was alive, but then ECW died in 2001 Acclaim was the fly in the ointment that caused the ECW name to be abandoned in the InVasion angle since they got the matter tied up in court. As co-owners, Acclaim was a secured creditor, in that their debts were supposed to be covered by the property of the company. When ECW died, outside of the tape library and the copyrights whose value was questionable, ECW's assets totalled less than $50K. Acclaim was owed $1.5 Million. The matter was eventually settled, but not after a long technical legal battle.
But this was a case of Acclaim getting screwed over by others. Acclaim themselves often screwed employees, or rather, former employees. A famous example of this was Sculpted Studios. When Acclaim bought them, the employees got stock options as part of their contracts. Fair enough. Flash forward a couple years, Acclaim then fired half of them, breaking the contracts. They then gave these fired people a sucker's deal. They could take a modest severance package that included signing a deal that they'd never be able to sue over the stock issue that Acclaim wasn't honouring, or not sign it, bring a lawsuit, and get nothing. But the twist was, any lawsuit you could file would go at the end of the long list. And there was a LONG list. So you'd probably get nothing anyway.
This all was part of the turbulent early 00's for the company. Early successes, like the start of the Burnout Franchise or the early Dave Mirra games, were overshadowed by poor sales for most of their games, cancelled products, Steve Perry and the lawsuits.
Steve Perry was an executive in Acclaim, and his marketing choices during this time were… Memorable, for all the wrong reasons. From offering 500 pounds to any British couple who named their child Turok to trying to purchase advertising space on genuine tombstones for Shadowman advertising, Steve was an interesting chap. But his efforts all paled in comparison to what really killed Acclaim off, the lawsuits and the mismanagement.
Yes, making bad games that had bad sales didn't help. But Mary-Kate & Ashley's lawsuit over unpaid royalties was a major blow to the company, as was a lawsuit from the investors in the company itself over ‘misleading statements'. But the true killer was the BMX XXX fiasco.
NSFW. Really.
The Dave Mirra series of BMX games, as part of the Extreme Sports craze of the time, was not exactly a huge massive success for the company, but it was doing ok. But ok wasn't good enough for the third game. They wanted big big sales! So they threw in sex. Lots and lots of it.
This led to complaints from watchdog groups. It led to Dave Mirra distancing himself from the game and then suing over it. It led to gamers being insulted over the cynical nature of the ploy and the fact that the game sucked anyway. And it led to Acclaim being a laughing stock and put in stocks over it publicly.
Yes, the company continued for a year or two after it's release, but this was the beginning of the end. No title after BMX XXX did well, leading to the company's financial troubles of 2004. The last few titles were released, all hoping to be the magic bullet, but none were. And in September 2004, Acclaim filed for bankruptcy. The company had over $100 Million in debts. They had to sell off all it's assets in an attempt to pay off those loans.
The choice properties, Burnout and Juiced, got bought by EA and THQ respectively. Most of the rights to the other games got bought by Throwback Entertainment, who since then have sold on the Re-Volt and RC related properties to We Go Interactive. But the Acclaim name had another life ahead.
Acclaim Games was founded in 2005 by former Acclaim Entertainment CEO Howard Marks, who bought the Acclaim name for $100K. The new company was based around ‘free MMORPG' market, where you could play games for free after registering. The profit came from in game advertising and micro transitions.
But the company lasted only a few years before it too folded, with 9Dragons the only game out of 14 to survive, now in the hands of GamersFirst, the rest of the properties shut down by the new owners, Playdom.
So, overall, what can we say about Acclaim? Was it a joke? In many ways, yes it was. A company founded on the idea that you only needed a name people knew to be successful might have worked when gaming was first starting, but once the industry gained traction, it was insulting. But then again, those in the company were trying their hardest. Few people ever set out to make something crap. But Acclaim did end up that way.
However, although the most obvious legacy for Acclaim is a punchline, it did give us some things. The concept of licensed games does have a very low crap to good quality, but think about how some of the finest games ever were in fact licensed. Sure they are rare, but Goldeneye, NBA Jam, WWF No Mercy, Batman Arkham Asylum, Aladdin, all licensed. The company's methods of having offices and people in the various countries around the world was the market standard for many years. Some technical achievements the company made are still in use today.
But overall, one thing remains true. For all the crap Acclaim made, all the bad games, one thing remains true. Bad management will always kill you. Acclaim is an example of bad management. Not how licensed games are evil, or that rainbows are stupid, or that sex doesn't sell. But that anything, any market, any field, you need to run it properly. All of Acclaim's faults can be traced back to management, in some form or another. Letting bad product through, forcing through stupid ideas, bad business deals, trying to chase down the easy cash, all of it comes back to people wanting to use video games to make money. Not make video games which will then make money. Maybe that's what we should think of when we think about Acclaim…
Nah, let's just point and laugh, it's more what they would do.
Remember, questions can go in the comment section, or, better yet, to ask411games@gmail.com. We'll be back to our regular format next week. Until then, stay gaming gentlemen and ladies.
Acclaim wow brings back so many memories forgot all about them.
Posted By: Wisecracka (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 12:06 AM
Great article! As a young gamer in the late 80s/early 90s, it seemed like most of my NES and Sega games had the Acclaim name on them. I was a sucker for The Simpsons especially seeing I fell in love with the show.
Recently I dug out my old NES and Megadrive consoles, and games that I kept from that era. Acclaim still has more slots in my old collection than any other developers or publishers. Looking at some of them right now next to the computer! Only one that seems like a pretty solid game today is Double Dragon II.
Posted By: Earl (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 12:45 AM
There are a couple of things here that don't make sense.
"but they also began to make non-licensed games. The only game in that first batch that did well was Turok"
Are you saying that Turok wasn't a licensed game? Wha? The comic came before the games, and the opening credits for the game even say "Based on the comic book etc etc". It was most definitely a licensed game.
"The Man Breeze soon changed their name to AKI Corporation, and produced some fantastic wrestling games, culminating in WCW/nWo Revenge. And they just didn't match up to what Acclaim was producing in the sales."
What, you're saying that AKI's wrestling games didn't match up to Acclaim's wrestling games in terms of sales? So why did WWF jump ship to the company with lower sales? Doesn't make sense.
Aside from that, the rest of the article was great.
Posted By: Guest#2079 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 01:24 AM
Most of my memories of Acclaim are tied to an Australian magazine called Nintendo Magazine System. Did you ever read it?
Anyway, NMS were the biggest graphic whores I've ever seen, and they always gave higher scores to the games with the 3D rendered, high-resolution graphics. Anything that was slightly retro, or anything released on SNES or Game Boy during the N64's and Game Boy Color's reigns, was instant crap.
What ties into this is the fact that Acclaim's third parties (mainly Iguana) were leading the way in terms of N64 graphics, second only to Rare in my opinion. This led to NMS lavishing every Acclaim game with praise, even if it sucked major arse. According to them, Extreme G was better than F-Zero X (remember F-Zero X's basic graphics? They complained about that), NFL Quarterback Club was better than Madden, Turok 2 was better than Goldeneye, etc. Anyone who's played any of those games will know that the Acclaim ones were utter crap in terms of gameplay, and were only superior in terms of graphics. And surely not even Turok fans can justify Turok 2 being the only game to ever be awarded 100% (yes, even better than Ocarina of Time) by the mag.
It got even worse when the South park license came along. All you ever heard was 'Acclaim/Iguana always deliver excellent games (really?) and this will be no exception'. South Park got 91% and South Park Rally got 88%, despite being rubbished by every other reviewer on the basis that the gameplay was sub-par. Even Re-Volt and Armorines were praised by NMS, despite every other source claiming that Re-Volt was meh and Armorines was unplayable.
So anyway, after buying a few of these games on the basis of NMS's reviews and being frequently disappointed, I grew to hate Acclaim. I remember them as 'that company who only cared about graphics, not gameplay, and who probably paid NMS for all those great reviews of shitty games'. Whether that perception has more to do with the company itself or the magazine I grew up reading, I'm not sure. Maybe it's a bit of both, but after reading this article, it sounds like I wasn't the only one who ever got fooled by their big licenses and flashy graphics.
It didn't help that Acclaim's 'graphics over gameplay' philosophy seemed to continue over to the next generation, when they published IR Gurus' rubbish AFL games. As an AFL fan, I found these games to be deeply offensive, and the fact that reviewers gave them high scores was even worse. In fact, after having a look through their list of games on Wikipedia, the only two Acclaim-published titles that I ever genuinely loved were Aggressive Inline and Burnout 2. Everything else from Acclaim that I've played was either 'good but not great' or 'complete and utter rubbish'.
I guess that's why people make jokes about them.
Posted By: Guest#8584 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 02:10 AM
Here's a question for next week (hopefully): who actually owns the rights to the existing Turok games, the rights to publish new Turok game, and so on?
After playing Serious Sam on XBLA, I started thinking how awesome it would be if someone remade Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (they're similar games in case you don't know) for download services. This time, there'd be no fog at all so you could see where you're going, improved controls (no need for 'walk/run' toggle coz you've got two analogue sticks now), and of course, HD graphics. And if they want to go the whole nine yards, they could add an online multiplayer mode based on Turok 2's or Rage Wars' multiplayer.
I actually think it would be a genuinely great game, possibly the only Acclaim game of that era that would age well. Let's find out who can make it happen and send them a letter... ;)
Posted By: Guest#0017 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 02:19 AM
Great read, as always, Mr. Sforcina.
Posted By: Guest#1057 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 02:35 AM
Great article Sforcina, but I do want to make one correction -- Turok wasn't an original property. Turok is an old Gold Key comic book character that, at the time, was being published by a company called Valiant (the same comic company Shadowman came from). Valiant is the company that Acclaim purchased soon after the success of the Turok games, in the hopes of utilizing the characters in a variety of different games. Aside from Shadowman and Turok, there was only one other game featuring Valiant characters that I can remember (Iron Man & X-O Manowar: Heavy Metal, notable for also featuring a Marvel comics character). Valiant/Acclaim Comics only lasted three or four years after the purchase, as Acclaim was just as bad in the comics market as they were in video games -- I remember my local comic shop refusing to even stock their books after some shady dealings with the company.
Posted By: Guest#1196 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 03:09 AM
Good article. Also of note, Acclaim's European division was known to do a few publicity stunts late in Acclaim's lifespan. Like offering a reward for the first person to name their baby Turok to promote the new Turok game. Or a rather distasteful promotion involving using graves to advertise a new Shadow Man game.
Also, Acclaim got into the comics business for a while along with Valiant comics. One of their games featured a crossover between X-O Man O War and Iron Man. Though other developers did the work on most of their games (like Rare, who also did the some of the Wizards and Warriors games), late in its history Acclaim did build a sizable stable of in-house developers through acquisitions, including Sculptured and Iguana. They also had then state-o-the-art graphics tech with pre-rendered games like Batman Forever. WWF War Zone had some very realistic textures - I think some of the work might have been done around Acclaim's Glen Cove offices, not all that far from the WWF from Stamford.
Posted By: The Seventh (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 08:22 AM
The whole Acclaim/Midway licensing thing still throws me off to this day. I just don't get how they managed to steal the rights to NBA Jam away from the company that created the games.
Posted By: Todd Vote (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 11:31 AM
Great article, as a few have said before me, I remember a lot of my early gaming days in the 80's having the Acclaim brand attached to it.
Would you be willing/able to do a comprehensive history on one of the first successful MMORPG's, Everquest, for a future article?
Posted By: Mac (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Does that make me the Wario of the Tomtom Galaxy?
Posted By: Blottie (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 01:02 PM
Always love your Special Editions Mat. Keep up the excellent work.
Posted By: Guest#0803 (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 01:40 PM
"There are a couple of things here that don't make sense.
"but they also began to make non-licensed games. The only game in that first batch that did well was Turok"
Are you saying that Turok wasn't a licensed game? Wha? The comic came before the games, and the opening credits for the game even say "Based on the comic book etc etc". It was most definitely a licensed game.
"The Man Breeze soon changed their name to AKI Corporation, and produced some fantastic wrestling games, culminating in WCW/nWo Revenge. And they just didn't match up to what Acclaim was producing in the sales."
What, you're saying that AKI's wrestling games didn't match up to Acclaim's wrestling games in terms of sales? So why did WWF jump ship to the company with lower sales? Doesn't make sense.
Aside from that, the rest of the article was great."
On the first part, he's referring to licensing games, not games of licensed properties. There were no companies making a Turok game to license, so they made one.
And as for the second one, it's just worded a little strange. The THQ numbers didn't match up in that they were far greater.
Posted By: G-Walla (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 02:45 PM
Welcome to Inside Joke Theatre ... ;)
Posted By: Jed (Guest) on January 23, 2012 at 08:41 PM
I just wanted to add, hearing Acclaim always makes me think of the basketball bouncing on the logo from NBA Jam.
Posted By: G-Walla (Guest) on January 24, 2012 at 12:28 AM
decent read, I guess. You did well given the subject matter and the source material. Acclaim really was shit wasn't it? It almost wasn't worth writing about. I mourn for your lost time.
I preferred R&F of Sega and SNK. Developers (and failed console makers) often have far more memorable highs and far more remarkable lows. Try to find another
Posted By: Shio (Guest) on January 24, 2012 at 06:09 PM
Quick question, last year i heard seevral rumours about Discworld Noir being ported to the Live Arcade & PSN, yet i've heard nothing since, do you know if this is still going ahead?
Posted By: RM (Guest) on January 28, 2012 at 07:43 PM
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