You see that, Eidos? That's how we'd like to see you!

Good bye Acclaim.

I'll probably remember you fondly as "that company that used to make NES games".

For some reason I'm not as elated as I expected I would be that they've gone. Wait a minute they bloody advertised on tombstones, idiots.

oh im so sad sniff sniff
now if Atari to will just lay down and die the world will be a better place

RABicle: Makes me wonder what the ad space on their tombstone costs...

Someone on Slashdot put it like this: "This proves that God is alive and benevolent!"...

Ok, so Acclaim may not have been a shining star of late, but i think everyone should show a bit more respect here.

The company is laying of hundreds of staff and has been a part of video game history... they've been around for ages.

I personally don't want to see EA as the only game developer in the world, and this loss of Acclaim is just one more step towards formulaic games that we've been playing for too long already. What companies are going to continue to take risks with new franchises and novelty ideas if this happens???

It's also very sad so here people wanting Eidos and Atari to go this way also... joking or not i'd HATE to see Eidos and Atari go bankrupt.

The more publishers, the more variety, and the better choice for us.

Show the respect the company deserves!

More variety of crap? No thanks...Yeah I feel sorry for the people that lost their jobs, but if they are good enough they'll find work elsewhere...But I don't feel bad for the bigwigs who didn't know how to run a real game company and shoveled crap onto the market...Thanks for a few of your early games, Acclaim, but 7 years straight of crap is enough...

take a look here http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/215.html there are some great games on that list, it hasn't been years of just crap

And the last good game on there, imo, was Turok 1 in 1997...early-1997 to mid-2004 = approximately 8 years of crap...Worse off than I previously thought...

see what happens when turok goes multiplatform? The once might Turok has fallen...he was really good on the n64, but once they decided to go multiplatform the quality really suffered and that game sucked so much. Not to mention the dumb marketing campaign for turok...change your name to turok...LOL

If there were any game developer who deserved to go bankrupt, it would be Acclaim. They've been around since forever, but they have never really developed anything special. It was Acclaim I believe who made/published Narc. This was a pretty good arcade game I hear, but on the NES, it became known as the game (coupled with some Friday the 13th), that turned me off action games for a very very long time, until the N64 came out, and I started to find that action games were fun again. (Especially ones not developed by Acclaim).

I have no real fondness for the company, as their only games that I really liked were either ported from something made by another developer, or simply published by a small developer (ie. Burnout). Years and years of crappy games just sort of tarnishes the reputation of any developer.

But I am still somewhat sad to see them go though, even after all their attrocious games and lousy business practices. The world now has one less game developer, be they good or bad. Somehow I suspect that in Acclaim's case, the real problem with them was management and not really talent... and I wish all the staff employed by Acclaim well, and hope that they can move on to actually accomplishing great things.

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take a look here http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/company/215.html there are some great games on that list, it hasn't been years of just crap

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Man, I just flew in from Athens, and boy are is my butt tired!

*Silence*

As usual, the big news happens when I'm not around, but wow I didn't expect this so soon!
I'm sure the corporate weasels have an ace up their sleeve to save their own skins, they're not THAT stupid; its the employees I feel for. Hopefully they'll get picked up or start their own ventures.

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Originally posted by: RABicle
For some reason I'm not as elated as I expected I would be that they've gone. Wait a minute they bloody advertised on tombstones, idiots.

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Karmas a bitch... Nintendo helped Acclaim through the tough years by making Turok a big seller... Acclaim repays Nintendo by 1.Making it multi plataform during the Cube era... 2.Making The last turok terrible, and then being one of the first companies to dump the Cube, and bad mouth it infront of the media...

Well tough luck... Im glad the makers of awesome titles like BMX XXX, and the Mary and Kate franchise, are gone... Good Riddance!

"Actually Tombstones are a very good food to advertise videogames on. The people who buy Tombstones are primarily college students, and parents for their children to eat. They hit the demographics right on. Also they aren't the only ones to have advertised videogames on Tombstones... Not to mention neither company really just advertised, but rather it was a special deal/contest thing. And if you still think for some bizarre reason that's a bad food to deal in, you haven't seen nothing."

LOL...I seriously hope you were joking, because the tombstones that Acclaim advertised on(or so was said) are the gravestone type...

Oh no, where will we go for crappy movie liscense games and atrociously bad sports titles now? Oh yeah, there's always EA, I forgot...

What happens to Worms 3D for xbox? Acclaim's bankruptcy is making some people guy it for the gamecube. The burnout games rocked. And worms is good (well, I think armegeddon for the PC will always be best). Of course, those are just games that they published. Tem 17 can hopefully get new publishers, if they haven't already. And Burnout 3 is coming out under EA. Apparently, it got a 10/10 from OXM (higher than Halo? O_o). Wounder what would've happened if Acclaim published it.
EDIT again: Whoops, XBN, not OXM. And I have no idea what they gave Halo. I wonder why Burnout 3 isn't being published for the GCN though.

"why should Atari die? They were the first company to make games for at home viable. They were responsible for tons of arcade games before that happened, and without arcade games, not only would there be no home games today, but who knows what the industry would be today."

Actually, the Atari of today is not the same company that was Atari 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. The Atari you are talking about threw in the towel a couple of years ago, Infogrames are now known at Atari - they just swapped their names.

Generally speaking now though, if 300 game makers are sacked, that makes 300 up & coming game makers with bright new ideas and talent waiting in the wings for longer. Shrinking of the industry is always a bad thing.

Sure, Acclaim weren't the greatest quality developer but i spent many hours on the couch with my housemate playing baseball...

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As far as Acclaim, you all seem to dwell on their bad games...

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Some people here claim this is bad for diversity. Well, if Acclaim actuall contributed any diversity that would be a valid point, but it's about as bad for diversity as EA Sports going out of busiess.

Eidos might have been a good company once, but they're falling. Many companies have lost their former glory (e.g. EA was once a forerunner of innovation, can you imagine that?) and become crap, those companies should just die. The present performance is all that matters, just because the pony had lots of tricks ten years ago doesn't mean it isn't ready for the meat grinder now.

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Cheatfreak: why should Atari die? They were the first company to make games for at home viable.

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
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LOL...I seriously hope you were joking, because the tombstones that Acclaim advertised on(or so was said) are the gravestone type...

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That said, I think I do remember a game of some type being advertised on Tombstone pizzas...Though I can't recall what it could be or if I'm just making this up in my head...

I know Atari has changed hands many times, and is now Infrogrames, anyone should know that. That doesn't change the fact that Atari basically started the videogame industry. And even to this day they put out great games under their new ownership. But I guess only developers count now, publishers shouldn't exist.

KDR: present performance is not all that matters. For one thing, for your horse analogy, there's many stories of return to glory, after many years of being gone. Watch Sea Biscuit for one example. And in videogames, just because a developer or publisher isn't currently doing phenomenal doesn't mean they deserve to be "put in the meat grinder". They are capable of doing better in the future. By your logic, some countries should've been destroyed when they weren't doing well, or people. Are we only supposed to give the upper class a fighting chance in the world? Should we actively enforce the survival of the fittest ourselves? Or rather let nature take it's course. You know that you could compare Nintendo to Eidos' former glory, Nintendo has fallen an equal amount of what they once were, as Eidos has. But your biased opinion rules above any such comparison.

Atari didn't change ownership to Infogrames, they died, long ago. Infogrames bought the trademark and changed their own name to Atari. There is NO connection between the old Atari and the current Atari (IIRC this is actually the fourth company using the Atari name). Infogrames didn't start the videogame market.

joe: Nintendo doesn't produce absolutely horrible, buggy pieces of crap yet. Once they do I'm willing to bet even the former Nintendo fanboys will want to see them dead. Eidos might redeem themselves, yes, but they better do it soon. You can't harp on past events forever. Eidos needs to rise again, if they fail they should just die. So far I don't see any attempts at Eidos to make that comeback (as opposed to Midway, who made that anouncement and apparently kept their promise).

AFAIK, Atari was started by Nolan Bushnell, but he eventually borrowed a lot of money from Time-Warner to help make the Atari 2600 as big as it was, so they got control over the company.

Bushnell was a nerd and a dirty hippie (oooo... I'm gonna get it for saying that ^_^), so he didn't get along with the suits at Time Warner (but will I get it for saying that?). After Bushnell said that the 2600 needed to be dropped by Atari, and replaced with something more modern and powerful and expensive, the suits thought he had lost his mind, so they had him replaced. Time Warner milked the 2600 until the videogame industry collapsed.

Then Time Warner split Atari into "Atari" (the hardware maker), and "Atari Games". And sold the hardware division to the Tramiel family.

Time Warner decided to completely change Atari's image, so they renamed them "Tengen" and started making NES games. Then they sent a lawyer into the patent office, saying they needed the specs for the NES's security chip, because Nintendo was suing them for breaking the lockout (which they weren't). Then using Nintendo's own blueprints, they broke Nintendo's lockout and made pirate games, and got sued by Nintendo. They said, "See, we told you so. Nintendo's suing us. Just like we said." Nobody fell for it.

The Tramiels tried to make the "Jaguar" console and the handheld "Lynx", but both were basically failures, and the Tramiel's hardware-making Atari went out of business. (Where are they now, I wonder?) I personally thought it would've been cool for Microsoft to buy the Atari-hardware rights before making the XBox. "Microsoft Presents: The Atari XBox!" But, they didn't. Ah well.

Atari Games eventually got picked up by Midway, who made that Wayne Gretzky hockey game for the N64, and probably a bunch of other stuff, but eventually gave up on sticking the "Atari" name onto things.

Infogrames bought what was left of Atari Games in order to get some of their rights and licences, and evenutally said "Hey, what they heck, we're allowed to do it." and changed their name to "Atari".

Note that Nolan Bushnell is now the CEO of Infogrames/Atari.

AS glad as I am that Acclaim is going bye bye, we all know that another company will just take it's place. My bet is Eidos.

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
That said, I think I do remember a game of some type being advertised on Tombstone pizzas...Though I can't recall what it could be or if I'm just making this up in my head...

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Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Atari didn't change ownership to Infogrames, they died, long ago. Infogrames bought the trademark and changed their own name to Atari. There is NO connection between the old Atari and the current Atari (IIRC this is actually the fourth company using the Atari name).

joe: Nintendo doesn't produce absolutely horrible, buggy pieces of crap yet.

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"And the point about Nintendo falling as much as Eidos I meant financially "


Hahahahahahahaha! I know you are wrong there.

You cut my quote short, I said "financially and commercially." Meaning the two combined. I wasn't clear I guess and I can see why people would find fault with the financial remark. However if you add in the commercial variable, I think they have posted some huge losses.

As far as financials they made profit of over 10 billion in just over a decade, and then posted losses right after that happened (in the companys long history), I think that's quite a big jump in financials. Further impacted by the fact that the company had 95% of market share for portable systems and still posted losses...

"The company forecasts a first-half current loss of 7.0 billion yen, compared with a 25 billion yen profit estimated earlier."

"its first interim loss since going public in 1962."

7 billion yen= 63,584,981.99 USD and 25 billion yen= 227,087,387.38 USD. So that equals a loss of (add the two figures together and...) $290,672,369.37 million dollars.

Round that figure and you have losses of $291 million dollars, which is more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

Then theres the commercial variable, the fact how the majority of consumers see them today, and the difference in the sales of their home consoles, going down more and more each generation. The nes sold over 60 million at a time when the industry was small, the snes sold over 49 million, N64 sold over 32 million, and now the Cube is at about 15 million and will be lucky if it can reach 25 million.