An Acid Trip Back to Acclaim

Back in my early days of gaming up to the modern age, Acclaim Entertainment put out a good number of games that pretty much slathered my sausage. Acclaim was founded in 1987 and produced a number of licensed games based on comics, TV shows, and movies. They were also responsible for the ports of many of Midway’s arcade games in the early-to-mid 1990s, including the Mortal Kombat series. Some might say this led to their eventual downfall as rabid fans of franchises such as Batman or Dave Mirra BMX were angered at the poor quality of game that was released. In the 90′s, Acclaim did some weird shit. During the company’s decline towards bankruptcy, Steve Perry, (former MD of Eddie Stobart Ltd & now IT guru – right hand man of Bill Gates) made several infamous business and marketing decisions. One example was a promise to British gamers that a 500 pound prize would be awarded to up to five winners who would name their baby “Turok”, to promote the release of Turok Evolution. Just think, these days you can find a dozen idiots who will name their baby Megatron if their facebook group gets a million fans. No payoff there. In the 2000′s they suffered multiple lawsuits. The Olsen Twins sued over unpaid royalties and Dave Mirra laid an egg over being associated with BMX XXX after boobs were put in it. Apparently Mirra did not want to be associated with women’s breasts. (note: GameCasa and it’s members are enthusiastic supporters of women’s breasts and will accept any and all opportunity to be associated with them). The final straw came from investors after claiming that management published misleading financial reports. You do not mess with investor’s money. Period. But before Acclaim was eventually bought out and the name sold and had other business phrases applied to it, there were some memorable games released. Let’s take a trip back:

The Simpsons Games

Back in the early 90′s, the Simpsons were everything. Every piece of merchandise sold with a Simpson on it sold like the golden fleece. The first of these games to release was Bart vs. The Space Mutants in 1991 for the NES. In this game, Bart has to thwart an alien plot to take over Springfield. Any game that is the first of it’s kind for a particular brand will be one that everybody has to get, and this was no exception. I got. My neighbors got it. My enemies got it. But it was hard as hell and it was one of those games with no passwords so you had to play through all five levels to beat the game. Sometimes it was just enough to play the first level so you can have Bart prank call Moe. This game was followed up the same year by Bart vs the World. Acclaim would go on to release several more Simpsons games, my favorite being Virtual Bart for the Sega Genesis. In this game, Bart went into a virtual reality exhibit (when Virtual Reality was the “it” thing) and Bart became all sorts of different things like a dinosaur, a baby, and something resembling Mad Max.

WWF Games
Again, like with The Simpsons, Acclaim was the first to release a Nintendo game based on WWF. WWF Wrestlemania was released in 1988 and only featured six wrestlers: Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Randy Savage, Honky Tonk Man, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Ted DiBiase. I remember having to order this game out of the WWF magazine that I had a subscription to. It had the theme songs to every wrestler and tried to follow some of the wrestler’s real moves. Randy Savage had the elbow drop, Bam Bam Bigelow had a flying headbutt and only Hulk Hogan could slam Andre the Giant. Two generations later, Acclaim released the first two WWF games for the N64, PSone, and Dreamcast: WWF Warzone and WWF Attitude. These games were memorable in that they were the first ones to use more of a 3D style of wrestling, not just the straight camera view from the front all previous games had. It also had videos, real voice taunts and create a wrestler. After Acclaim lost the license to THQ, the WWF/WWE games really took off with the Smackdown vs Raw franchise. But again, Acclaim will go down in history for having the first WWF game. That first Wrestlemania game is still likely overshadowed by Nintendo’s Pro Wrestling. It’s hard to say what is more memorable, the monotone theme of Hogan’s “Real American”, or being told at the end of Pro Wrestling that “A Winner is You!“. It should be noted that Acclaim also made the first and only ECW games, but they were criticized for being too similar to the WWE games. Acclaim later went on to release the Legends of Wrestling series.

South Park Games
South Park made its debut on Comedy Central in the early fall of 1997. It didn’t take long for Acclaim to snatch up the license and again be first on the scene with their South Park video game released in December of 1998. At first it was fun to be playing a South Park game. The game was a first person shooter where you could select a South Park character and play a story mode campaign or go head to head with your friends in a multiplayer game. Goldeneye 64 was still smoking hot at the time so Acclaim took full advantage of this by having the South Park kids stand in for Bond, Jaws, and Oddjob. South Park fans had fun hearing the catch phrases from the show. Making Big Gay Al come out and say “Super!” got many of us to laugh. The replay value of the game didn’t hold up as much as other shooters out there, despite the fact that one of the weapons in the boys’ arsenal was snowballs soaked in piss. Acclaim followed their original South Park game with South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack for Dreamcast. This game was a mini-game collection with some trivia fun thrown in. The last of the South Park games was South Park Rally, a racing cart game released in January of 2000. For whatever reason, either due to lack of sales, or due to Trey and Matt’s crazy quirks, there has not been a South Park game released on consoles since then.

The Turok Series

Turok is a series of first-person shooter video games based on the Turok comic book character, set in a primitive world inhabited by dinosaurs and other creatures. The series of games started in 1998 on the Nintendo 64 with Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. In the game, the player controls the Native American Tal’ Set, referred to as “Turok”. He must stop an evil cyborg, “The Campaigner”, from conquering the Lost Land and possibly the universe. Turok was Acclaim’s first exclusive title for the Nintendo 64 and was part of a strategy to develop games internally and license merchandise. Acclaim acquired the rights to Turok when it purchased Acclaim Comics (formerly known as Valiant Comics) in 1994. Suffering from cash flow problems and falling sales, Turok became Acclaim’s best hope for a financial turnaround. The Nintendo 64′s graphics capabilities were pushed to its limits, and the developers were forced to compress or cut elements to fit the game on its 8 megabyte cartridge. Turok was a critical and commercial success, earning rave reviews from gaming magazines and becoming the most popular title for the Nintendo 64 in the months following its release. It was judged one of the best console shooters on the platform. Even though some derided Turok as a clone of Doom, it held its own with the open environments and not just being a dungeon crawler. Over the next five years, Acclaim released five more Turok titles and the series helped cement Acclaim’s place in the 21st century.

The Power Team

If you go way back, you might remember this syndicated video game show called Video Power. I pretty much forced my family to watch it during dinner time. Video Power was a game show were kids did trivia and won prizes. Part of Video Power showcased an animated cartoon featuring many of Acclaim’s characters. They included, Kwirk, Tyrone from Arch Rivals, Kuros from Wizards and Warriors, Max Force from NARC, and Bigfoot (The Monster Truck, not Sasquatch). There were a couple video game cartoons on back then, but it was rare to see a cartoon showcasing just one company’s characters. This cartoon always stuck in my mind and I wanted to mention it.

So even though Acclaim is no more, we could see a revival of their games. In 2006 Throwback Entertainment, a video game company that had once considered acquiring Acclaim Entertainment, announced that it had purchased 50+ of Acclaim’s games, and vows to bring such titles as Re-Volt, Extreme-G, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Vexx, Fur Fighters and many other franchises into the next generation and beyond.