Gamescrap has 7 chronicles

1. Acclaim's Marketing Geniuses
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Apr 24 2008

   From spray painting birds bright green to putting ads on tombstones to offering ten grand for parents to name babies Turok, Acclaim Entertainment would do anything to hype up their shitty games no matter how demeaning or shameless it may be. Come for the thrills, stay for the punch and horrible MS Paint illustrations, but most of all, take a look at why the world is a better place without what could have possibly been the stupidest game company in the world.
   
   Acclaim Entertainment. Most gamers who grew up during the 8 and 16-bit era may fondly remember the name that brought home such great franchises as Mortal Kombat and the early Simpsons games – not that they were any good, but hell, it’s all we had at the time; we had to cope somehow. That’s not to say that everything that bore the Acclaim name was pure gold, as gems such as Total Recall, Friday the 13th, Revolution X, and Jaws could attest. Despite some minor (okay, major) movie-related slip ups (hey, everyone has them after all), Acclaim was at least a passively decent company. At some point, however, something went terribly wrong and Acclaim seemed to have lost its way. What would transpire thereafter would leave egg on the face of the gaming industry for years to come.
   
   Around the time of the last generation of consoles, Acclaim became the whacked out Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan of the gaming industry. Before you could scream “MORTAL KOMBAT”, Acclaim seemed to find itself in a proverbial swirling toilet bowl of general zaniness and crackpot schemes. Amidst the games reaching new and exciting levels of wretchedness, there were rumors of adult-themed BMX games in development, lawsuits from spokesperson darlings like Dave Mira, and even worse, a whole new slew of Mary Kate and Ashley games. It was as if Acclaim had been hijacked by a new generation of guys resembling Howard Hughes complete with long beards, fingernails, and tissue boxes on their feet. Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse…it seemed the cabin fever had spread to Acclaim’s marketing group and we were all too late to save them.
   
   While the company was admittedly churning out more crap than a German porn star stuffed full of herbal laxatives and a bowl of colon blow to boot, the marketing team tried their damndest to generate some buzz in an attempt to sprinkle some potpourri on the thick, greasy sludge that was coming out of the company. This is the best those poor bastards could come up with, as the illustrious Jack Palance once said - believe it…or not!
   
   

   Steve Wilkos asks: HOW MUCH IS YOUR KID'S NAME WORTH TO YOU?!
   
   Let us start our magical tour with a trip back to the year 2002. Turok 3 had been released a couple of years prior and disappointed masses, so Acclaim was in full marketing mode for Turok: Evolution. In August of that year, the brain trust of Acclaim with much fanfare released a statement that any baby born on September 1st, 2002 had the chance to earn their newborn a $10,000 savings bond towards college or childhood expenses on the company’s dime. What’s the catch? The parents merely had to pre-register on the Turok Website, legally name their child Turok, then wait to hear if they were the lucky couple that won. Of course, they weren’t out of the woods yet as the kid had to keep the Turok name for one glorious, yet embarrassing year and the parents had to provide a birth certificate adorned with the beloved dino hunter’s name as proof. Once you look at the small print, it kinda seems like too much of a hassle, doesn’t it? Forget baby shaking British nannies or prom night dumpster babies, the real scarring is done by parents who are more than willing to sell out their kid for a quick buck. God I love America.
   
   
   
   The real kicker is that there were reports of a few takers, but nothing official ever seemed to be released. You’ve gotta admit, it takes balls to do it, but you really can’t help but laugh at the fools that named their kid Turok only to find out they didn’t win. That, my friends, is the sweetest thought of all. Concurrently, Acclaim also offered $800 US to adults in the UK to change their names to Turok for a year. Apparently, there were actually a few people who lacked the dignity and social life to pull it off. I hope they all dreamed of their vast $800 fortunes while their consciousness was slipping away as their lungs filled with toilet water. Yum.
   
   Speaking of Turok…the idiot line starts here.
   
   The hype surrounding Turok Evolution didn’t stop at the naming of human offspring or lifeless Dungeon Masters looking to pick up a gold-plated player’s guide. One month prior to the baby brouhaha on July 18th, 2002 a man by the name of Jason Read set up camp in front of a London EB Games where he claimed that he was going to make history. Backed by a state-of-the-art tent adorned with a “Queuing for Turok” banner, a generator, and a bevy of gaming consoles provided by Acclaim themselves, Read was to set a world record by waiting in front of the store for the 51 days until Turok: Evolution was released on September 1st, or Turok Bloody Sunday as the marketing geniuses at Acclaim. Gag me with a goddamn spoon.
   
   
   
   Read quickly became a small-time media darling with various TV and radio stations, newspapers, and internet journalists lining up to find out what was going through this maniac’s head. An Acclaim PR rep released a statement saying, “When we heard about Jason's attempt to get into the record books by queuing for one of our games, we felt that we had to support him. We sincerely hope that by providing him with some of our other games, the next 50 days will fly by."
   
   
   
   Mr. Read, in the meantime, mugged it up for the cameras and told reporters, "I've been a huge fan of the Turok series and was excited to see that a fourth game is being released later in the year," Read said. "This gave me the perfect excuse to make my record-breaking queuing attempt, and I'm fully committed to going all the way." By the next day, after the word had spread and the hype had settled, Mr. Read was miraculously nowhere to be seen. It turned out he was a plant in a half-baked, half-assed marketing scheme that wasn’t creative to start with. With as good as Turok: Evolution turned out to be, whoulda’ thunk it?
   
   You wouldn’t expect stupid people to move so fast, but…
   
   Now, let’s fast-forward a month to September 30th, 2002. Acclaim, whom at the time held the rights to the Burnout franchise, was about ready to release Burnout 2: Point of Impact onto the unsuspecting public. Obviously inspired by the cautious reactions of cops all over the country when The Fast and the Furious came into theaters, Acclaim insisted people get to the store as fast as they could. In commemoration of the game’s release, Acclaim offered to pay the speeding tickets of anyone who is pulled over in their rush to go out and buy the game. You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty damn classy.
   
   Anyways, it turns out that Acclaim got their bluff called and immediately retracted when confronted with questions about whether or not this was a shameless marketing promotion. At least it’s good to know that there’s still some semblance of hope in the world.
   
   Permission to mess ourselves…
   
   In November of 2003, Acclaim’s latest endeavor for new marketing buzzwords and janitor’s rights became clear: Bloodvertising. To gather hype for Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, a game that the PR machine had already dubbed “The goriest game of all time”, posters equipped with cartridges of red dye would be posted and would literally drip blood for a week straight. In addition to the posters, special bus stop kiosks would also drip blood out of panes of plexi glass, which Acclaim promised they’d clean up once the campaign was over. Unfortunately, the Bloodvertising scheme never really took off and turned out to be the latest in a growing line of Acclaim aspiring to do huge things, but ultimately, being all talk in the end.
   
   From Bloodvertising to Birdvertising…
   
   In addition to flooding the streets with blood, 2003 also marked the year that Acclaim discovered new and exciting acts of animal cruelty. In an attempt to promote Virtua Tennis 2, Acclaim planned to spray paint twenty homing pigeons (or to the layman, dirty birds or flying rats) bright green with Virtua Tennis logos emblazoned on their wings and set them loose on the Super Bowl of tennis: Wimbledon.
   
   Acclaim’s VP of Marketing justified the act much like a woman attempts to justify falling down the stairs to explain her black eye. "The Virtua Tennis 2 pigeon marketing campaign is highly targeted, as it brings awareness of the game directly to tennis enthusiasts. The Wimbledon tournament is famous for the occasional descent by pigeons onto center court, but our advertising pigeons are trained to go straight for the fans and flap their logos in front of them." Acclaim promised the paint would be safe for the birds, but let’s be realistic…humans can’t even spray paint in their own garage unless they aspire to immortalize themselves as well as their double-wides and stained wife beaters on Cops.
   
   Bright green disease bags flapping a cloud of hepatitis and leprosy in my face to advertise a sucky tennis game equals pure awesomeness. As with almost every other scheme these purveyors of crappery had cooked up, the homing pigeon marketing never came to fruition. What it did do is generate a ton of hype and controversy, which is exactly what Acclaim wanted to happen in the first place. As a result, the world should hate itself a little more because of it.
   
   And into the afterlife…
   
   As you may have guessed, I’ve saved the best for last – or the vilest of the vile so to speak, given that Acclaim actually pulled this one off. Not a company to show respect for the dead, Acclaim offered to pay the funeral costs of any family who was willing to put an ad for Shadowman: 2nd Coming on the tombstone of a recently passed family member.
   
   And just who were they intending to market this new form of advertising towards? “[the offer might] particularly interest poorer families" was their response, to which the world pretty much replied with the statement “die in a fire”.
   
   While the Church of England denied allowing this to happen, there is some photographic proof of these tombstones floating around. Maybe Futurama wasn’t too far off with advertisers targeting our dreams next after all.
   
   In the end, evil didn’t prevail and by 2004 Acclaim was dead and gone much to the chagrin to those of us who were trolling gaming news sites waiting for their next ingenious scheme. Anyone can point fingers at John Romero for threatening to make you his bitch with Daikatana or Sony for their laughably bad alliwantforxmasisapsp.com marketing bomb, but it’s safe to say that none of these come close to the pure, unbridled insanity of Acclaim’s marketing and PR departments. They’ll be remembered for setting an industry back twenty years with the likes of William Hung, Uwe Boll, and everyone affiliated with the making of Cavemen. Just be sure to remember this whenever anyone asks why the gaming industry can’t be taken seriously nowadays.
   
   

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Gamescrap has 1 comment on this chronicle.

1. Sn1pe Warman
   Posted On Apr 24 2008

   Wow.... interesting ideas here.