Something worries me, and it has bothered me since the early nineties. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, my skin cold and clammy, screaming. Badly colored sprites, badly animated, collision detection does not exist, arrrggggggh! I compose myself and reach for the acetaminophen. Are you sure it was all a dream?

NOT! Flying Edge really happened!

Both the Mega Drive and the Master System were fully supported from 1991 to 1994, which is why later MD games are so rare (except Ballz, please go …). The list of external contributors for both consoles is long and many still exist today, albeit in a different form (Domark is now Eidos, for example). One that you think wouldn’t exist is Flying Edge. Even in my late elementary school / early high school years, I knew if I saw that logo it meant trouble.

Actually, it didn’t start that bad. The first FE game (as I’ll call them from now on) was Arch Rivals, which at the time seemed like a stupid idea, a 2v2 basketball game where you could only play as one of the “characters”. . Although it doesn’t play very well, the reduced number of sprites on the screen and the slightly violent dynamics made it a relatively fluid and enjoyable experience compared to basketball games of the time. It also laid the foundation for something really special, which you’ve probably already guessed.

So FE were about to pioneer … not quite. The games that came after read like a who’s who of utter and utter nonsense. If you ever get a chance to play George Foreman’s KO Boxing in the MS race, run as fast as you can. It looks like someone threw up and it’s actually less fun than looking at one of Mr. Foreman’s grills. It’s rushed, plain and simple. This theme continues with Smash TV. Smash TV was an immensely popular arcade machine whose main attraction was the two-joystick system where you could shoot in the opposite direction you were running. The SNES version works quite well (the 4 buttons act as the second joystick) but the graphics and collision detection are horrendous, on both the 16-bit and 8-bit versions. Don’t get me started on the sound and control systems in the Sega versions, we’ll be here all day … The ridiculous Crash Dummies, RoboCop 3, and Double Dragon 3 are just a few more games that no reputable developer would ever make. be associated with.

FE was just another bad developer with no one else to blame but themselves. Wrong! Now here’s the twist in the story, FE was actually a subsidiary of Acclaim. Apologies to those who already know, but I did not know! There is a hint in the aforementioned SNES version of Smash TV, Acclaim are there quite proudly in the opening sequence but they left FAITH to the Mega Drive version … How can a company responsible for making gems like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam (see what I did there) do you have any Flying Edge parts? I just had to find out.

Acclaim had been established since 1987 with much of its focus on license-based games that it acquired from comics (Spider-Man games galore), TV / Sports (WWF), and movies (Alien 3). He also forged a strong “partnership” with Nintendo despite the fact that titles like Rambo on the NES were pretty poor, Star Voyager on the other hand was considered revolutionary. You will never see Flying Edge in any Nintendo games (if you do, it’s doubtful, throw it away) as they were created specifically to “produce” Sega games. Apologies for the many speech marks already used in this article.

The information on the contract dispute between Nintendo, Acclaim and Sega is so scarce that I am stuck with how Nintendo persuaded them to do this. In fact, the only conclusion I can come to is that Acclaim was happy that FE was the slaughtered lamb to preserve their relationship with Nintendo. This seems logical given Nintendo’s dominance in the home entertainment sector and the gradual decline of arcades. Looking at FE’s back catalog, it’s easy to assume that the developers / programmers in this division weren’t very good compared to Acclaim. The reality is that for every Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam there were several stinkers. Forget what you know about Acclaim, the reality is that they really weren’t that good, period. If it weren’t for Midway, Mortal Kombat wouldn’t have existed. The later Acclaim catalog around the same time reads: Double Dragon 2; Krusty’s Fun House; NFL quarterback club; The Addams family, etc., etc. Not good!

Flying Edge was disbanded in 1994, which clearly must have provided Acclaim with an exclusion clause for all those bad titles. What did they endorse it with? Again, mostly hit and miss. The Turok titles proved popular on later consoles, and some of the Spider-Man games were good. They were also Virtua Tennis 2, which is still a joy. However, the garbage … sticks. Games with poor licenses continued: Batman Forever, Paris-Dakar, Gladiator, Fantastic Four. Acclaim filed for bankruptcy and disappeared in September 2004, ten years after Flying Edge’s disappearance.

There’s a reason that the big guns (Sega, Nintendo) and some of the smaller guns (Domark like Eidos) still exist. Evolution. Acclaim, in all its glory, never strayed from its main goals: buying licenses, adding games around it, seeking help from other willing developers.

Acclaim (or the name) was bought by Acclaim Games, which was one of the few companies in the early 2000s that focused on online games. Unfortunately their games were unpopular and were later bought and disbanded by Playdom Games in 2010. The name Acclaim now only appears in the footnotes under “What Could Have Been”.