So once upon a time, a bunch of people bought the rights to and revived the old Acclaim brand name and somehow even suckered wrestling legend Jeff Jarrett into the mix. They had announced a presentation video by means of a teaser video that showed off some of Acclaim’s past titles… none of which they have the rights to because those were sold off when the original Acclaim Entertainment went out of business a couple decades ago. And then the above video took place this past Wednesday.
Needless to say, there were quite a few people who were… underwhelmed by what they had to offer.
Of the bunch that was shown, the only two games that seemed remotely interesting is Talaka – a side-scroller with roguelike elements – and Katanaut – another horror-based side-scroller that’s actually available on Steam right now… and then there’s a bunch of bland, nothing happening, and outright subpar titles that aren’t even worth mentioning.
In other words, those few brief clips of vintage games that once brought the Acclaim name to prominence now served as reminders of games that I wish I were playing right now… because what you have in store for the future doesn’t hold a candle to what you had in the past.
In hindsight, I don’t know what anyone was expecting out of this. All of the notable Acclaim offerings are now in the hands of other people and there was no way in hell that this smaller, essentially independent version of Acclaim was going to get all that stuff back. It’d be nice, but it wasn’t going to happen. At least when Bubsy was brought back from obscurity, he brought the Accolade brand with him… for whatever that’s worth. Acclaim has nothing of its past to tie to other than a logo and a name that people had fond memories of… except those memories are now owned by other people.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea why Acclaim was brought back to begin with. From what I’ve seen, you could have easily presented these titles under a different company name and it wouldn’t have made a difference… except maybe less people would care? I guess?
I don’t know… I’ll just have to wait and see if they’ve got someone working on a remake of Destination Earthstar. THEN I’d be excited for an Acclaim revival. This line-up on the other hand? Take it or leave it. Sorry.
In other news, Nintendo remembers Virtual Boy exists and will release some games for you to play on Switch 1 and 2… but will also require you to play them in a Virtual Boy mock-up that costs about as much as Mario Kart World…
Welp… dodged a bullet, there.
dtm666 