Acclaim: Redeemed?

Jeremy Goodwin
jgoodwin@mail.snu.edu

Since the release of the Sega Saturn, certain parties have blasted Acclaim at every opportunity, yet I feel that Acclaim was not the crap company that others would have you believe, at least not completely.

Acclaim actually released several very good games for the Saturn. In fact, I would argue that three of the Saturn's *must have* games were translated by Acclaim. These two games are of course, Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition (Puzzle Bobble 2), Bust-A-Move 3 (Puzzle Bobble 3), and Galactic Attack (Layer Section). I would like to briefly discuss each of these games.

Galactic Attack was one of my first Saturn Games, along with Darius Gaiden. Together these games make up 2/3 of all traditional shooters on the Saturn in the US (The only other that remotely fits into that category being Soviet Strike). Layer Section was one of the games that were embraced as revolutionary in Japan, when it introduced the lock on targeting system to the genre. The final level of Layer Section is an absolute graphical feast, which previews some of the 3D building effects that show up in Layer Section 2 (released in the US as RayStorm on the Playstation), another fine Taito Game.

Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition was probably the second best puzzler on the Saturn until Bust-A-Move 3 was released (second to Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo, a not very shabby title to say the least). The best gameplay elements were brought over from the Neo Geo original and the fun was increased with three new bubble types: the Blocker bubbles, Bowling Ball bubbles, and Magic bubbles that make all bubbles of the kind shot into it disappear. BAM2:AE is still the group favorite among my friends here at college.

Bust-A-Move 3. Once again, Taito grew Puzzle Bobble into an even greater puzzle game than its predecessor. There's really not too much to say about this one, you can read the reviews for yourself to find out about the new playable characters etc. so I won't bore you with the details.

Acclaim also brought over the aforementioned Darius Gaiden, which has great music, although it doesn't receive as much play as my copy of Galactic Attack does. Another decent title brought to these shores by Acclaim is D, the prequel to Enemy Zero, one of Sega's headlining games for the 1997 Holiday Season.

But are these few good games, most of which are Taito discs (does anyone else remember Working Designs' first two games? Cadash and Parasol Stars? Also Taito titles) enough to redeem a company which brought us such drivel as Revolution X and others too numerous to mention here?

Perhaps it is time to recognize Acclaim for its work in translating such wonderful Taito titles. But likely we can agree that they should have stuck to what they were good at, and it would have been nice if they had left the titles of the games alone for a while.