The news that Acclaim has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, terminated 600+ employees worldwide and will very likely liquidate all assets and go out of business forever should not come as much of a surprise.
For many gamers, it's cause for celebration.
The company's focus on putting out crap games for cash has been its long-term trajectory, broken only by occasional brushes with greatness that were promptly ignored or exploited. One of those brushes was Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter on the Nintendo 64. It seemed Acclaim had found a way to break from its tradition of lousy movie-licensed platformers -- Batman and Robin for the original PlayStation is an oft-cited example, since it nearly sunk the company just prior to Turok's release -- by plumbing comic books for rich new source material.
Turok was hot. What it lacked in story it made up for with great graphics, stunning weapons and immersive first-person gameplay that easily rivaled a pathetic console Doom port by Midway. Turok's many sequels, until the last one, were ambitious numbers that pushed the N64 hardware to the limit -- so much so that they sometimes brought the frame rate to an uninspiring crawl, even with the addition of the N64 memory booster pack. Most gamers stayed away. The final sequel, Turok Evolution, was an uninspired nail in the coffin for the franchise.
Shadowman (also on the N64 and ported to the Dreamcast and PlayStation) was another step in the right direction. Another comic book adaptation, it featured fantastic gameplay mechanics and adult-oriented action (no, not that kind!) at a time when the N64 was almost drowning in day-glo kiddified fare.
Re-Volt (originally on the Dreamcast) was an awesome RC car racing game -- so much fun that beta testers on the Xbox Live service lobbied heavily for the multiplayer test build to be finished and re-released for Xbox. It's not clear whether Microsoft muscled Acclaim out of fear that Re-Volt would overshadow its A-list racing titles or Acclaim just wussed out. (For the record, Acclaim did issue a press release saying the title was in development, but it quickly dropped off the rolls.) And Burnout, with its awesome sense of speed and jaw-dropping crash replays, is a much loved arcade racing series that recently defected to EA.
Another bright spot in the Acclaim vaults is the Dave Mirra BMX series -- or rather it WAS until the company insisted on building it into another vehicle for scatological humor, gratuitous nudity and really bad jokes. In doing so, it alienated its licensed star, who disassociated himself first with the game -- BMX XXX -- and later the company. The sad thing is that they might have pulled it off if they'd ditched the potty humor and focused on REAL adult situations. But they didn't, and in the process killed the franchise. While we're talking extreme sports, Aggressive Inline is decent entry in Acclaim's checkered history book. We can only assume that its sequel, Offensive Inline XXX: Booty Call on Wheels, got lost somewhere in development hell.
In truth, Acclaim never really shed its shabby business practice of punching out and dumping crappy licensed fare into the marketplace. Following the original Turok, which should have been both a breakthrough and a turning point for the company, Acclaim put out two truly awful South Park titles: a really bad cart racer (South Park Rally) and a sloppy trivia game (Chef's Luv Shack). We all bought them based in part on Acclaim's enhanced brand standing, which is why that sucky flavor lingers to this day and, sadly, stuck to South Park (which went on to put out a kick-ass pinball machine but has wisely steered clear of further videogames -- and as far as we know, didn't sue for brand dilution). Acclaim also overreached, trying to beat Sega on their own turf with NFL Quarterback for Dreamcast. They failed. And their mediocrity continued with such lackluster fare as Alias, Judge Dredd, Vexx and NBA Jam 2004.
It's funny. When the Olsen twins sued Acclaim for hurting their poor little brand by putting out crappy Mary Kate and Ashley games, I nearly wrote a rant defending Acclaim. I mean the crux of that frivolous suit was that Acclaim hurt their animated TV series, Action! But, in all fairness, that series crashed and burned on its own before Acclaim could even release the tie-in game -- or realistically complete the product plan. Say what you will, but Acclaim at least had the good business sense not to invest heavily in a title based on a TV series that had died on the vine.
The reality of the situation is that signing up to make the Mary Kate and Ashley games (which actually sold reasonably well with their target audience) hurt Acclaim's brand much more. Rather than flood the marketplace with cheap licensed tie-ins which very often don't even have much profit margin, Acclaim should have focused on their core strengths of comic book action racing and extreme sports that earned them, well, acclaim.
I guess after 17 years, they just couldn't kick the "crap in, crap out" habit. Too bad there's not a 12-step program for that.
"Fred," Acclaim executive: "I almost made a stupid decision that would have quickly relegated the title, Fur Fighters' Luv Shack, to the discount rack. Whoa, I better call my sponsor."
It seems almost sad that, most recently, Acclaim appeared to be pingponging back toward their proven genres with
Juiced, a street racer, and
The Red Star, another comic book-based action/shooter. But if those titles are any good, they'll find publishers. And you know Acclaim would just take the profits and put them into something like
Mary Kate and Ashley's Urge to Purge: Developer's Cut or
Extreme G-Spot Racing: Point of Impact. The fact is that once you've whored yourself for awhile, it's kind of hard to not slip back. One whiff of the crack, and you're right back down on your knees again commenting how it's "just like riding a bike."
I say put a bullet into them, just to be sure they're dead. Before they break our hearts again.
-=Gamewatcher
