Acclaim is one of those companies that has an odd history. Many of its terrible games were hidden under the LJN and Flying Edge labels, and it had a long relationship with Midway and WWF/WWE. They did publish some great games, especially the ports of Midway’s arcade games.
This is one of the companies that grew quickly, and then fell apart in the 2000s. It never really found its footing in the 2000s after losing the rights to WWF games. I’m not saying that these two are connected, but losing that contract didn’t help the company. I can’t think of one great game that they published following their relationship with Midway.
As with the other times I’ve gone over companies like this, I won’t focus too much on their history unless I find something interesting. I’ll briefly go over their other publishing labels and the relationship with Midway. Most of this will be my memories of this company.
Acclaim’s games were a big part of my childhood, even if I didn’t realize it. Going back over things like this can be fun, especially since I’ve already written about two of their subsidiaries. It will be fun to see what else comes up as I look into the company a little more.
Early Years
Like many companies founded in the 1980s, Acclaim’s roots can be traced back to Activision and therefore Atari. Sometimes when I’m looking into companies like this, I wonder how long it will take for me to find a connection to Atari. Just like Activision, the name Acclaim was chosen so it would appear in front of other companies in the phonebook.
As an aside, a phonebook was a thick paperback book that had phone numbers in it. Before the internet, you had to use one of these if you wanted to find the phone number for a person or business. You could also use them to prank call random people if you were so inclined, but I’m getting off track. Let’s get back to Acclaim.
They started as a publisher, but eventually bought some development studios. These included Iguana Entertainment, Probe Entertainment, and Sculptured Software. Even with these studios, they still outsourced work and published games from other studios.
Many of Acclaim’s games were licensed properties. They were based on movies, television shows, and comics. Later, they made games under the MLB, NBA, and NFL licenses. They also published games from Japanese companies that no longer had an American branch, such as Taito’s Bust-a-Move series.
Most of their success was in the 1990s. They published some very good games, and had the rights to several classic arcade games. Unfortunately, the quality of their games started declining in the late 1990s.
LJN and Flying Edge
The games that carry the Acclaim name weren’t made by that company. Much like its subsidiaries, LJN and Flying Edge, Acclaim was just a publisher. While LJN was a company before being purchased by Acclaim, Flying Edge wasn’t. The only reason I can think of for Flying Edge’s existence is due to the licensing agreement with Sega.
Acclaim purchased LJN to publish more games on the NES. At the time, Nintendo limited companies to four games a year. With the purchase of LJN, Acclaim could then release eight games a year. Other companies did similar things, such as Konami creating Ultra.
Once the exclusivity with Nintendo expired or was relaxed, Acclaim started publishing games for Sega. I have little to no insight into what the Sega contract was, aside from the reports that EA had a special relationship where they could publish more and do their own manufacturing. Acclaim didn’t have this relationship, so Flying Edge was created.
Neither publishing label lasted too long. Flying Edge had the better library of games. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t as much overlap as I was expecting. Acclaim actually published some of the lesser games themselves when it came to the Genesis. By the mid 1990s, these companies would get shut down. With the exception of one game being published by LJN on the Dreamcast.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were an interesting time for video game history. It made things rather confusing for people to research when the 2000s and 2010s came around. If you weren’t paying attention, you might’ve thought that companies like LJN, Flying Edge, and Acclaim were actually making things.
Arena Entertainment
What makes Flying Edge even more confusing is the existence of Arena Entertainment. This was another publishing label used by Acclaim for games on the Genesis, PC, and handheld games. I wasn’t really expecting to bring this up, as I thought I knew about their subsidiaries from the early 1990s.
11 games were released under this label. The most notable were Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and WWF Rage in the Cage. I’m not sure why they were created. Flying Edge was established around the same time, which makes this weird.
Arena Entertainment was originally owned by Mirrorsoft. Acclaim purchased Arena Entertainment in 1991, and then shut it down in 1994. It’s one of the odd pit stops that I made while writing this post. It just feels like a redundancy that Acclaim didn’t actually need.
Relationship with Midway
Acclaim had a right of first refusal with Midway to port their arcade games to home consoles. This meant that Acclaim had the rights to many of the great Midway games from the early 1990s.
With this relationship, Acclaim published some of the Mortal Kombat games, NBA Jam, and at least one WWF arcade game. They would also make a sequel to WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, called WWF: In Your House. This was an important relationship for Acclaim early on.
Acclaim managed to get the exclusive rights to the NBA Jam series for home console games. They ended up making their own games under their Acclaim Sports label. This caused the series to fork into an Acclaim Sports branch and a Midway branch. Acclaim managed to keep the name while Midway released a few one offs in the same style as NBA Jam.
In 1994, this relationship ended when Midway’s parent company bought Tradewest. This company was turned into Williams briefly, and then became Midway Home Entertainment. A lot happened for Acclaim in 1994, and this move might have been a factor in them creating their own arcade division.
NFL Quarterback Club
This is starting to spiral out of control. I had forgotten about their attempts to take on EA. One of those attempts was their NFL Quarterback Club series.
There was a time when EA didn’t have the exclusive rights to the NFL or the NFLPA. This meant that anyone with the money could get the rights to and publish an NFL game. Some other examples of this include the NFL Blitz series and the NFL2K series. The latter was an evolution of the Joe Montana Football series.
I don’t remember the NFL Quarterback Club games, which means I might have to give them a try at some point. They were released from 1993 to 2001. They weren’t released every year and appeared on several consoles. There were games from 1995 to 2001.
The 98, 99, 2000, and 2001 installments were either on the N64 exclusively or on the Dreamcast and N64. They also deteriorated in quality based on the review scores. The series returned to Sony in 2002, and the 2003 entry was planned for the Xbox, but was canceled.
Acclaim lost the license from the NFL. This was a big blow to the company, and one that they didn’t recover from as they filed for bankruptcy in 2004. At some point, I’ll have to go over the NFL Quarterback Club games in more detail.
Arcade Division?
These are two of the stranger things that I came across when I was looking stuff up. While the arcade division is odd, but not too surprising, I wasn’t expecting them to have comics. The latter was possible because Acclaim bought Valiant Comics in the mid 1990s.
From 1994 to 2004, Acclaim published video games using the Valiant characters. The games that stand out to me are the Turok games. I completely forgot that Acclaim published them, which says more about the number of games they put out. When Acclaim filed for bankruptcy, the Valiant assets were sold off.
Acclaim Coin-Operated Entertainment was created in 1994 and was shut down in 1998. I can’t find a record of a single arcade game that they made or published. The only reference to this is a creation announcement (Link) and a closure announcement (Link). It shows that they had plans for something, but never did anything with it.
While I can understand why they picked up Valiant, I don’t get the arcade division. It felt like other missteps by companies like Sierra and Atari. I’ve read a lot of stories of video game companies trying to get in on things at the wrong time, and that is what Acclaim’s arcade division felt like.
Decline and Closure
In 2004, Acclaim started to sell off its assets. Several licensing agreements were revoked due to non-payment. On top of all this, their games weren’t selling well. Before all that, the 2000s weren’t very kind to Acclaim.
They had licenses for WWF/WWE games, NFL, MLB, and NBA games. Acclaim also had some missteps with their racing games. The only one of these four that they managed to hold onto until their closure was the NBA.
The Turok games were one of the bigger hits for them. Those rights were taken back due to non-payment of royalties. This is the same thing that happened with the MLB license.
The rest of their rights were sold off throughout 2004 and 2005. The Acclaim brand was passed around several times over the years. It still exists today, but nowhere near the same level as it once did.
How I want to remember them
I have fond memories of several Acclaim games. While I don’t think they put out too many great games, they did publish some very good ones. There were also a handful that I enjoyed at the time of their release.
NBA Jam and some of their WWF games were quite fun. I like WWF Warzone more now than I did at the time. It is a very good wrestling game. WWF Attitude was one of my favorite games when it was released, but I immediately forgot about it when SmackDown was released. Out of the ones that I remember, NBA Jam and NBA Jam Tournament Edition are probably the best.
Because they own LJN and Flying Edge, that means I have way more memories of them than I thought. The Flying Edge games were better overall. Steel Empire and Double Dragon III were probably my favorite out of their library. LJN has a bunch of games that I like, but none that are great. I haven’t played all of their SNES games, so I don’t want to make a list of them.
The Acclaim games that I’ve played recently were the Legends of Wrestling series. These were a nice replacement for the loss of the WWF and ECW licenses. Those three games got a little better each time, with Showdown: Legends of Wrestling being my favorite.
I have no idea how Acclaim is viewed by other people in the “retro gaming community,” mostly because I don’t really care. From the vocal minority that I’ve heard from, they’re hated. I don’t put much stock in this because of how strange YouTube comments can be. I like them for what they are. Not all of their games were good, but I had more fun with them overall.
If you liked this post, check out some of my other posts about video game companies. Such as LJN and Flying Edge.