Diet LJN: The Brief Story of Flying Edge

Most collectors and video game historians know about LJN. They started as a toy manufacturer and had the rights to several licenses. Eventually, they got into video games and were purchased by Acclaim.

Acclaim used LJN as a way to publish more games on the NES. This was when Nintendo had a very restrictive publishing contract that limited the number of games that a publisher could release each year. To get around this, companies created shell companies to publish more games. Ultra and LJN are the two that come to mind when I think about this.

However, what isn’t talked about as much is how companies worked with Sega to release games. Acclaim had a contract with Nintendo, and so did their subsidiary LJN. To get around this, Flying Edge was set up. Many of the games that LJN published would end up being published under the Flying Edge label on the Genesis, Game Gear, and Master System.

There isn’t too much information on Flying Edge, which creates some oddities in the information out there. I tried to sort through it to tell this company’s story. Let’s dive into this and see what Flying Edge was all about.

List of Games

We should start with the games they published. Like LJN, Flying Edge wasn’t a developer. They didn’t make any of the games that their name was on. They worked with the same group of developers that LJN and Acclaim did. Here is a list of the developers I could find:

• Ocean Software
• Arc Developments
• Software Creations
• Beam Software
• Gray Matter Inc.
• Audiogenic
• Sculptured Software
• Bits Studios
• Park Place Productions

Depending on your source, Flying Edge published between 13 and 19 games on the Genesis. I didn’t look up the Master System and Game Gear because I wanted to focus on the Genesis. Also, many titles will be the same on the other systems. Here is a comprehensive list of games:

• Arch Rivals
• Krusty’s Fun House
• The Simpsons: Bart vs the Space Mutants
• The Steel Empire
• WWF Super Wrestlemania
• Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge
• Smash T.V.
• Double Dragon 3
• George Foreman’s KO Boxing
• NBA All-Star Challenge
• Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge
• The Addams Family
• WWF Royal Rumble
• Roger Clemen’s MVP Baseball
• The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare
• Robocop 3
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• Champions World Class Soccer
• The Incredible Crash Test Dummies

I wanted to see how this list compared to the games LJN published on the SNES. The two publishers share seven games. I used the Wikipedia lists for this so that other sources might differ. I wish I could find out why Acclaim had a selective approach to using Flying Edge, but I’m pretty sure the answer is lost to time, if there was an answer at all.

Now that we have the list of games out of the way let’s take a closer look at the company and its parent company.

Similarities with LJN

We’ve gone over the games that Flying Edge published on the Sega Genesis; now let’s look at the games that LJN published on the SNES:

• Alien 3
• The Incredible Crash Dummies
• NBA All-Star Challenge
• NFL Quarterback Club
• Roger Clemens’ MVP Baseball
• Spider-Man
• Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge
• T2: The Arcade Game
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• True Lies
• Warlock
• Wolverine: Adamantium Rage
• WWF RAW
• WWF Royal Rumble
• WWF Super Wrestlemania

I expected many more than this, but it seems like Acclaim didn’t need them until Spirit of Speed 1937. Acclaim would stop using both labels in the mid-90s. All three companies used the same developers, and there isn’t as much overlap between Flying Edge and LJN as I expected.

When I started looking at the games both companies published, I was expecting them to be the same. Instead, I found only seven games to be the same. Acclaim published many of the Flying Edge games on the SNES. This isn’t surprising.

Flying Edge feels like a diet version of LJN. By the time Flying Edge was set up, LJN was out of the toy business and was only publishing games. In 1994, Flying Edge was shut down, and LJN followed suit shortly after.

The big difference between LJN and Flying Edge is why the companies were created. LJN has its roots in the toy industry. Acclaim bought them and then shut them down after they weren’t useful anymore. Flying Edge was only started to publish games on another console. Let’s talk about that part a little more.

What was Flying Edge?

This is where things get murky, and I’m stuck with a handful of questions that I can’t find answers to. We know they were a publisher and didn’t make video games. I haven’t been able to discover who worked there and what did they do?

An easy answer to this would be that they used Acclaim’s marketing, quality assurance, and distribution systems. LJN had this already, as they had a longer track record. They were a toy manufacturer and had a distribution system in place. Acclaim would’ve had something similar.

Evidence shows that Flying Edge was using either LJN or Acclaim’s team. They worked with the same companies as LJN, and Acclaim would easily slap a new logo on the games they were shipping out. At this point, I’m not 100% sure.

That doesn’t mean the information isn’t out there; it just means I haven’t found it yet. I also don’t feel comfortable presenting something that I can’t support. Let’s discuss why they were created a bit more.

Why were they created?

This question has a few parts to the answer. Flying Edge was created to publish games on Sega’s hardware. That is the simple answer. However, it led me to ask, “Why didn’t Acclaim just use the LJN label instead?” It has to do with Nintendo’s licensing agreement.

When a company signed on with Nintendo, they signed an exclusivity agreement. Companies created shell companies to get around this because this agreement limited them to 5 games a year and a 2-year exclusivity clause.

In the 90s, this agreement would be changed, but it was still in effect for the most part. It also limited Acclaim’s ability to publish on both Nintendo and Sega consoles. Flying Edge was a way to get around it.

Sega also had a publishing agreement. Acclaim would’ve been limited on how many games they could publish on Sega hardware. Because LJN was locked into Nintendo for a period of time, a new company needed to be made to publish for Sega.

We know there was a publishing agreement for Sega for a few reasons. The first is Electronic Arts signing a sweetheart deal where they could publish more games than normal and do their own manufacturing. There was also a lawsuit between Sega and Accolade, where Accolade did something similar to EA but didn’t sign a publishing agreement with Sega. They ended up making unlicensed games, and Sega took them to court. That is a story for another time.

This is all a long explanation to say that Flying Edge was created to publish games for Sega’s hardware. They were LJN but without the list of games in the NES. They also managed to avoid the ire of the internet as people started going back to look at retro games.

Final Thoughts

The story of Flying Edge is short and murky. There isn’t much mystery about why it was created, but who worked there is. I would like to have a list of the people who worked to create this company and what they did while there. Unfortunately, that seems to be lost somewhere on the internet.

I can only guess that the employees were from Acclaim. That would make sense, but I can’t find anything to support it. I can only find a one-line entry in a list of Acclaim Entertainment’s subsidiaries. It was a little disappointing.

I’m sorry that I have to leave things like this. There isn’t more information I can find on them, and I can only speculate. Flying Edge was a publisher. When they were no longer useful to Acclaim, they were shut down and largely forgotten.

Now, they’re a footnote in Acclaim’s history. I’m not the first to ask a question about this publisher, and I probably won’t be the last. If more information about Flying Edge is uncovered, I’ll update this, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.