The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants is a platformer game developed by Imagineering. The game was published by Acclaim in February 1991 for the...
The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
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Acclaim Entertainment was a video game publisher founded in 1987 by Greg Fischbach, James Scoroposki, and Robert Holmes in Oyster Bay, New York, and later headquartered in Glen Cove on Long Island. For most of the NES, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo 64 years, the Acclaim logo showed up on licensed games, arcade ports, wrestling titles, and eventually its own original series like Turok. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 after a long slide that started in the late 1990s.
I played a lot of the Mortal Kombat games on console growing up, which Acclaim published. Playing as Sub-Zero and freezing everyone was my favorite part of the game. I barely ever could get the Fatalities to work, but still great games regardless.
Acclaim got its start publishing games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, many of them built around movie, TV, and toy licenses. Rare developed several of those early NES releases for Acclaim, including Wizards & Warriors and WWF WrestleMania. In 1990 Acclaim bought LJN, the label behind NES versions of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and LJN kept putting out licensed games under Acclaim ownership, including Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge.
The Simpsons were a big part of that era too. Acclaim published The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants on the NES in 1991, and more Simpsons games followed on Nintendo and Sega hardware.
Acclaim handled the home versions of the original Mortal Kombat, which launched on September 13, 1993, a day the marketing called Mortal Monday. Sculptured Software built the Super Nintendo version and Probe built the Sega Genesis version. Nintendo had the SNES version swap the blood for gray "sweat" and tone down the Fatalities. The Genesis version shipped censored by default, but entering the ABACABB code on the code of honor screen turned the blood back on. That code became part of gaming history, and contemporary sales reports had the Genesis version outselling the SNES version by a wide margin.
Acclaim published the home versions of Mortal Kombat II in 1994 as well, and this time both the SNES and Genesis versions kept the blood intact. Midway handled publishing for later entries in the series.
Arcade conversions were a major part of the Acclaim business model. The company published home versions of Midway's NBA Jam in 1994, followed by NBA Jam Tournament Edition. Both games did huge numbers on the SNES and Genesis, and they kept Acclaim on store shelves alongside its licensed catalog.
Acclaim held the WWF video game license for most of the 1990s. That run included the NES and Game Boy WrestleMania games, WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, WWF In Your House, WWF War Zone in 1998, and WWF Attitude in 1999. THQ took over the WWF license after that, and Acclaim moved over to ECW with ECW Hardcore Revolution and ECW Anarchy Rulz.
In 1995 Acclaim stopped depending entirely on outside developers and bought several studios, including Iguana Entertainment in Austin, Texas, Probe Entertainment in the UK, and Sculptured Software in Salt Lake City. Those studios were later renamed Acclaim Studios Austin, Acclaim Studios London, and Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City. Acclaim also picked up Software Creations in Manchester, which became Acclaim Studios Manchester. Probe went on to make Extreme-G and Forsaken for Acclaim before the renaming.
Acclaim bought Valiant Comics in 1994 and relaunched it as Acclaim Comics, which gave the company a library of characters it fully owned. Turok was the payoff. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out on the Nintendo 64 in 1997, developed by Iguana Entertainment, and it sold over one million copies. It was a first-person shooter on a console with no other big shooters at launch, and the fog everyone remembers was there to hide the N64's draw distance limits.
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil followed in 1998, then Turok: Rage Wars, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion, and Turok: Evolution in 2002. Shadow Man, another Valiant character, got his own game in 1999 from Acclaim Studios Teesside, with Shadow Man: 2econd Coming following on the PlayStation 2.
The early 2000s catalog was a mixed bag. Acclaim published Burnout in 2001 and Burnout 2: Point of Impact in 2002, both developed by Criterion Games. Electronic Arts picked up Burnout 3 and then bought Criterion outright in 2004, so Acclaim never benefited from the series becoming a hit. Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX sold well for Acclaim, but the 2002 follow-up BMX XXX leaned on nudity and strip club footage and became one of the more infamous releases of the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube generation.
Acclaim also became known for marketing stunts during this period. The company offered rewards to parents who named a newborn Turok around the launch of Turok: Evolution, tried to buy advertising space on tombstones in the UK for Shadow Man: 2econd Coming, and offered to cover UK drivers' speeding tickets for Burnout 2 before pulling that promotion after backlash.
Acclaim's money problems started well before the end. The company spent heavily on licenses and studio acquisitions in the mid 1990s, and the shift from cartridges to the PlayStation hurt a publisher whose business was built on Nintendo and Sega cartridge sales. EA and Activision outspent Acclaim on major sports and movie licenses, and a lot of Acclaim's later licensed titles reviewed poorly. Losing the WWF license to THQ took away one of its most reliable sellers.
By 2003 and 2004 the company was closing studios, laying off staff, and canceling games to stay afloat. Acclaim filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 1, 2004, and the case was converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation, which ended the original company.
The Acclaim catalog was sold off in pieces after the liquidation. The Turok name ended up with Disney, which released a new Turok through Touchstone in 2008. The Acclaim name itself came back in 2006 as Acclaim Games, a free-to-play online publisher that Playdom bought in 2010. The name has resurfaced again since then, which I covered in Acclaim is back?
Most of the Acclaim catalog lives on through retro collectors and remasters. Nightdive Studios picked up the Turok rights and released Turok in 2015, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil in 2017, and Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion in 2023, and it also remastered Shadow Man in 2021. Those releases brought the N64 shooters to PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. Acclaim had the pieces to be a lasting publisher and threw most of them away chasing short-term revenue. The Turok games alone suggest what a more disciplined version of the company might have built, and a few Acclaim games still make my list of games that need remakes.
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