1/28/00

The "New" Acclaim? Has the World Gone Mad???

Throughout the course of gaming history, Acclaim has always been synonymous with crap. Back in the 8-Bit days, Acclaim, along with LJN and THQ, unleashed a flood of both licensed and nonlicensed garbage that threatened to destroy every gamer’s faith in gaming. The endless surge of trash, such as those Marvel-licensed titles and horrible, horrible knockoff platformers, led many to believe, myself included, that the Atari crash was about to repeat itself. Thankfully, it never happened, mainly due to high-quality titles from Capcom, Konami, and Nintendo (yes, even I used to like Nintendo stuff). LJN disappeared from the face of the Earth following 8-Bit, and justice was served. However, Acclaim reinvented itself as "Flying Edge", and continued to produce mass-quantities of sludge for the then-new Sega Genesis. Ah, yes, who could forget those horrible X-Men and Spiderman licensed games, or those god-awful sports titles? Not content to just burn Genesis owners, they turned their evil sights on the Super Nintendo. And the madness continued. The crazy thing is, back then gamers were actually somewhat educated about products, and we didn’t even have the ‘Net back then. So, most of Acclaim’s affronts to humanity were quickly relegated to the bargain bin, where they belonged.

Now, apparently producing, distributing, and marketing a decade’s worth of low-selling tripe will take its toll on any company. Buoyed only by sales of its mediocre wrestling games, Acclaim underwent a massive restructuring about the same time as the release of the Playstation. The entire executive staff was replaced, and a new focus on "quality" was introduced. And, they actually looked like they might pull it off. Acclaim began purchasing outside development studios, some of which, such as Probe and Iguana, were actually pretty good. They got the rights to Alien Trilogy, which may look like a pixilated mess now, but was quite impressive at the time. Word began circulating about a kick-ass FPS from Iguana, which was supposed to stomp Quake. The gaming press heralded the rise of the "new" Acclaim. "Maybe they can actually pull this off," I thought.

And then, the terrible, terrible truth reared its ugly head. Following the fairly decent release of Aliens Trilogy, we were treated to Fantastic Four and Iron Man/X-O, generally considered to be the two worst games ever made, and rivaled only by Titus’ Superman64 in crappiness. The worst football franchise in history, Quarterback Club, became even more dangerous. While fairly harmless in the 16-Bit days, the 32-and 64-incarnations of QBC combined pretty visuals, which looked nice on the box, with the single worst football gameplay I have ever seen. Many, many gamers got burned here. And, apparently because no one at WWF cared, Acclaim was allowed to hold the coveted WWF license for WAY too long. The latest atrocities of Warzone and Attitude managed to burn millions of WWF fans. And, wow, did that cashrun DC version of Attitude suck, or what? Fortunately, Acclaim lost the WWF license to THQ last November, but unfortunately, they gained the ECW license at the same time. Yes, that horrible Warzone/Attitude engine will soon be put to use once again – this time sucking the life out ECW.

It turns out that even the acquisition of Iguana couldn’t help. Acclaim dumped its line of really bad comic books on Iguana, and presumably wanted good titles made from them. This included the aforementioned FPS, which turned out to Turok. The game had decent visuals, and some cool weapons, but that was where the fun ended. The fogging, framerate, story, and controls were so bad that anyone who had Goldeneye simply chuckled. The sequel had even worse fog, and a framerate so low that I thought I was playing it through a ViewMaster. And, Rage War is so bad that it’s not even worth discussing. Now I hear rumors about another Turok before the end of the year. Ugh. The comic book inspired spewage also included the below-average Shadowman and the downright awful Armorines. If the gods smile upon us, we will never see sequels to these.

Note to Acclaim: South Park games do not have to suck. I almost cried when I saw my beloved South Park crammed, kicking and screaming, onto the already bad Turok engine. An FPS based on South Park that basically involves shooting turkeys and clones for hours? Sure, why not? The scary thing is that it probably really did sound like a good idea to the geniuses at Acclaim HQ. This was followed by the You Don’t Know Jack rip-off, Chef’s Love Shack. Between the horrible load times (even on DC!!!), the horrible questions, and the inane mini-games, Love Shack goes straight to the pile ‘o’ coasters. South Park Rally almost had a chance of being good, were it not for the wonky control and nigh-impossible to navigate tracks. Yes, Acclaim kills another good license, and then continues to beat it mercilessly.

So why hasn’t this diabolical corporation been wiped out of existence? Why are they allowed to rape the consumer every chance they get? Unfortunately, it is an unwanted side effect of gaming going "mainstream". There have been some 27 million ‘Stations and 10 or so million N64’s sold in the United States, but I would wager that maybe a grand total of 2 million or so are actually even remotely educated about the titles that are available, let alone the companies that produce them. So, the hardcore know to avoid anything with Acclaim’s name on it, but that leaves another 30 million Joe Six-Pack’s to buy up this crap. Maybe his favorite wrestler or football player is on the box, or maybe the screen grabs look purdy – it’s scary, but often that’s all it takes for some poor dope to plop down $50 or $60 on a game that, even for rednecks, will surely disappoint. What compounds the problem is that most stores, especially mass-merchants like Best Buy and Target, have no return policy whatsoever. Once you open it, it’s yours forever. Believe me, stuff like Attitude and Superman would NEVER make onto the top ten sales charts if people were allowed to return them all. That’s one advantage to shopping at those mall stores, or with your good buds here at Gamehits: Chances are they can suggest good stuff and steer you away from garbage. And, if you don’t agree with their selections, almost every game-specific retailer has some kind of open return policy, so you don’t get stuck with my favorite recipient of mockery, Superman64.

If you’re still reading this tirade, you may be asking yourself, "But, Uncle Brad, what can I do to combat this enemy of everything that is good and just?" Well, kids, this is gonna sound easy, but the key is to just not buy this junk. Just say no. And help out your fellow man here, as well. If you’re in Wal-Mart or Target, and you see some well-intentioned but game-ignorant parent reaching for Quarterback Club or Jurassic Park: Warpath, be a nice guy and point them in the direction of NFL2K or Soul Calibur. Everybody wins: Little Timmy gets a game that doesn’t suck, and money is withheld from the naughty companies who make poo-poo. It’s important, now more than ever, that only good stuff sells. Money talks, and if companies can turn a profit by turning out trash, you’d better believe that that’s just what they’re going to do. There’s a reason that everyone’s making mediocre wrestling and racing games these days, you know. Let your money speak, and the corporations will listen. Of course, it helps if everyone else’s money is saying the same thing…

Before I end this fountain of positivity, I want to send out a plea for sanity from the gaming press. Pretty much all of the mags out there are guilty of hyping up any and every game on the horizon. I actually saw people hyping up those Jurassic Park and Zena fighting games, even though there was no chance in Hades that they would be any good. I know that it’s not fair to judge a game before it’s released, but let’s not treat every title as if it’s the Second Coming, okay? Gaming mags have larger circulations than ever, and readers depend on these mags for info. And, since most reviews tend to come out after a game’s release, many readers will use the previews to make their buying decisions. I’m sure everyone has noticed how editors will sing a game’s praises in a preview in one issue, and then give it a terrible score in the next. That sickens me. How about some freakin’ honesty? PSM and EGM are horrible about this, but the guys at Gamefan and Gamers’ Republic are at least somewhat honest about a game’s prospects.

So, is Acclaim the only bad game company out there? Not a chance. Anything with the words "Titus", "Accolade", or "Hasbro" on it should make you run far, far away. Psygnosis is getting borderline, but Kronos may be able to redeem themselves with Fear Effect, and Midway is getting better with stuff like Ready 2 Rumble and Hydro Thunder (as long as Mortal Kombat is dead and buried). Electronic Arts has been releasing a LOT of crap lately, but their library is so diverse that the good titles usually outweigh the bad ones. The aforementioned THQ has done a complete turnaround, going from really bad 8-Bit titles to top-notch wrestling (except those PSX WCW games. Eeewww.) and adventure titles(I can’t wait for Evil Dead!). Anyway, Acclaim isn’t the only offender, not by a long shot. However, they are definitely the WORST offender, with a rap sheet of deplorable titles longer than all the other companies put together. And that’s pretty bad.

Note: The inflammatory comments spewed forth in Brad's Soapbox are his own editorial steps on the brink of madness, and are not necessarily the opinions of Gamehits, or anyone else on Earth, for that matter.

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