Acclaim Entertainment

Acclaim Entertainment is a developer and publisher.

Acclaim Entertainment Webpage

One of the biggest video game publishers of the 1990s. The silence surrounding Acclaim Entertainment after its 2004 bankruptcy was finally broken 21 years later, when the company returned as a publisher of independent games.

History of Acclaim Entertainment

The company’s story began in 1987, when it was founded by three former Activision employees - Greg Fischbach, Robert Holmes, and Jim Scoroposki. The founders chose the name so the company would appear higher in alphabetical listings than Activision or Accolade.

Dynamic growth

In its early years, Acclaim Entertainment focused solely on publishing, with a catalog largely built around games licensed from comics, films, and TV shows. Over time, the company expanded and began acquiring development studios, including Iguana Entertainment, Probe Entertainment, and Sculptured Software. The company was also responsible for bringing Midway’s arcade games to home platforms, most notably the Mortal Kombat series.

That strategy paid off, and by the 1990s, Acclaim Entertainment had become one of the largest video game publishers in the industry. Its catalog featured games from brands like Turok, Shadow Man, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, WWF, Burnout (in Europe), and NBA Jam.

That wasn’t all - over time, Acclaim Entertainment also forged a close partnership with Marvel and secured exclusive U.S. rights to Taito’s games. Additionally, it was the first company in the industry to operate its own motion capture studio.

A slippery slope and bankruptcy

Although Acclaim Entertainment enjoyed record revenues of half a billion dollars a year in the mid-1990s, its financial situation gradually began to decline. After 2000, the publisher entered a downward spiral, and due to financial troubles, it began losing the rights to its most important licenses, including Turok, WWF (which went to THQ), and MLB.

As a result, panic set in at Acclaim Entertainment’s top ranks, leading to controversial marketing stunts like offering money for naming a child "Turok", attempting to advertise Shadow Man on tombstones, and releasing games like BMX XXX - which even led to Dave Mirra suing the company for misusing his image.

Ultimately, Acclaim Entertainment declared bankruptcy in 2004. Over time, some of the publisher’s brands found new "homes". For example, Juiced went to THQ, while Dave Mirra BMX and ATV ended up with Crave Entertainment.

Revival

The Acclaim brand itself was acquired by Howard Marks in 2006, who tried (unsuccessfully) to build Acclaim Games around it. Acclaim Entertainment made a second comeback in 2025, returning as an independent game publisher. Russell Binder, Jeff Jarrett, and Mark Caplan spearheaded the company’s second revival.