The decades of video gaming history there has now been have had many companies, developers and studios that have went under, due to one thing or other. Many of those names are revered, and their vanishing have left lacks in the world of vidyagaems that are felt to this day. A few of those: Atari (the current one has improved greatly lately, but it’s still not the same), Midway, Bally, Williams, Lucasarts, Rare (in its non-Microsoft incarnation), Telltale, SSI, New World Computing, and many more if I cared to dredge them out of the muck of my mind. And that’s just Western companies, there were plenty more in Japan, I just wanted to narrow the field down a bit.
One of those companies probably isn’t Acclaim. They were one of the biggest third-party publishers in the NES era, and they lasted to around the N64 era, but although they did put out some Premium Quality Entertainment (thanks Murderbot), they also put out a lot of what in Yiddish is called drek. Towards the end it felt like the drek percentage was getting pretty high, and it didn’t help at all that they kept pulling some dodgy ad stunts. They ran a context where they offered to pay couples to name their kid Turok, another where they tried to put ads for Shadowman on tombstones in cemeteries, and the less said ab0ut BMX XXX, possibly the game that destroyed the company, the better.
Well nostalgia certainly sells, even for the less savory publishers, and so it is that some people have decided one of the brands we needed to once again be subjected to is Acclaim. They released a promo video yesterday that unveils their initial releases, here it is (relevant portion 13 minutes):
The games shown:
- GridBeat! appears to be a hacking-themed maze/puzzle/rhythm game.
- Basketball Classics is a stylish retro-themed sports game that’s refreshing for being a new game based off of real players that didn’t come from the corpulent corporate cube of EA Sports. I’m pretty impressed they’re making this, it’s probably the game here I’m most interested in.
- Ground Zero Hero is a cartoony action shooter that seems to take inspiration from Vampire Survivors and Nuclear Throne.
- Pixel Washer is a retro-themed cleaning game that reminds me a bit of Powerwash Simulator, but maybe that’s because I’ve been playing that again lately.
- Talaka is a combat platformer with sketchy graphics.
- Toss Down I couldn’t get a strong read on, it seems to be an isometric shooting game in urban environments, with tornadoes around, maybe with a bit of classic 2D GTA in it?
- The Prisoning: Fletcher’s Quest appears to be a kaizo-style 2D retro platformer. I’m sensing a theme with some of these games. I don’t have anything against retro styling myself, mind you, it’s like one third of this site’s entire reason for being.
- HyperYuki: Snowboard Syndicate is a snowboarding game, obviously. It’s 3D, but has stylish and colorful low-polygon, cell-shaded graphics. I might have to follow this.
- Katanaut seems to be a dark pixel-art sci-fi combat game.
The question remains, why did they feel like they needed to resurrect the Acclaim brand and logo? Having a leg-up from obscurity is enough reason I guess, but none of the new games are based on and of Acclaim’s old IP. Maybe they could revive Extreme-G, Turok or Wizards & Warriors, but they haven’t yet.
