Posted in: Acclaim, Games, Video Games | Tagged: acclaim, Liquid Media Group

New Announcement Teases Acclaim Games Revival In Two Weeks

Yesterday evening, Twitter got a bit of a surprise that flew under the radar for many as someone teased Acclaim will return to making games. The defunct publisher, best known for their games on multiple consoles and arcade cabinets throughout the '80s and '90s had a ton of hits under their belt including NBA Jam, Mortal Kombat, Burnout, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, The Simpsons series, several WWF titles, and more. Through a lot of mismanagement and poor decision-making, the company went under in 2004. And for nearly two decades the rights to their name and properties they published have been sold every couple of years to someone new looking to revitalize some games or publish some throwback titles. As we've seen with Universal making Turok: Escape from Lost Valley in 2019, or Nightdive Studios re-releasing the first two Turok games for Nintendo Switch that same year, or EA Sports' mobile version of NBA Jam.

Now it looks like the brand may be getting a proper revival. Maybe. Yesterday evening this tweet popped up online with little fanfare, but it got a lot of people sharing it and talking about it without anything substantial to back it up. Someone is claiming to be re-launching the Acclaim brand, and they are teasing that they will be announcing new games and more info about their return on October 15th.

Whether or not this is real, however, is a bit suspect. Way back in 2006, Throwback Entertainment purchased the IP and practically their entire library of titles created in-house that didn't have rights issues or belonged to other IPs. Over the years people have purchased bits and pieces of those titles from Throwback, including Liquid Media Group in 2018, which bought up a lot of the sports titles like NBA Jam and All-Star Baseball. So at the moment, a lot of what used to be Acclaim is split between two different entities and a spattering of other companies who have one or two titles. (It should be noted, the two companies have worked together in the past, as recently as October 2020 when they agreed to partner on four former Acclaim titles together.) As of right now, according to the documentation you see here, the original website AcclaimGames.com is currently owned by Throwback Entertainment, which was updated in February of this year. The website simply has a clock icon that reads "Coming Soon! Get Ready!"

So is it possible that Throwback is relaunching the brand as Acclaim Games? Or is this someone else trying to stir the pot a little with a fake post while the real owners have been sitting on the IP with no plans to do anything with it? Unless someone leaks something over the next two weeks, we'll see on October 15th whether this revival is real or not.

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