Last week, the news was announced that the NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat publisher Acclaim was being resurrected from the dead after 20 years, with the WWE legend Jeff Jarrett set to be part of an advisory board for this new version of the studio.
This made headlines across the internet, with the company announcing plans at the time “to resurrect and revitalize its beloved portfolio of classic IP.” But it also raised a lot of questions too, such as what classic IP the company actually has access to (if any) after all these years.
Acclaim filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in September 2004 and its properties were later auctioned off to various other companies in 2006. It was at this auction that the Vancouver-based company Throwback Entertainment picked up the rights to several of the more well-known Acclaim titles, including Extreme-G, Vexx, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, and Fur Fighters, as well as a bunch of stock-keeping units (SKUs), originally published by Acclaim. It later offloaded 65 of these SKUs to Liquid Media in 2019. But, to this day, a full accounting of where the rights to every single Acclaim title ended up simply doesn’t exist (at least to our knowledge).
As a result, we reached out to the current CEO Alex Josef through its PR to try to get some clarification on what IPs it actually has access to, and if it plans to try and re-acquire some of its old properties to make these dreams a reality. The answer we got was slightly evasive, with the response simply telling us the company had “relationships with stakeholders and access to many of the classic, old-school titles from Acclaim”, with no indication as to what these titles actually are or why anyone should care.
Here’s the full statement Josef provided, for reference:
“First and foremost, we want to focus on new, original IP from talented indie developers. Part of revitalizing Acclaim is revitalizing its ethos of providing funding and support to development teams in order to help them make the best possible game and bring it to the largest possible audience. Acclaim will also have a secondary focus, which will be on identifying classic IP that can be rejuvenated and introduced to the current and future audience of gamers. We certainly have relationships with stakeholders and access to many of the classic, old-school titles from Acclaim, but the emphasis will be on selecting those that we feel will do justice to the original game and elevate the Acclaim brand overall.”
As things stand, it’s hard to get excited about this new iteration of Acclaim just yet, with the only interesting thing they’ve actually revealed so far being Jarrett’s involvement.
