10 Companies Who Made Their Name With Shoddy Licensed Games

Ah, Acclaim. They of such legendary advertising campaigns as ‘Name Your Baby Turok’ and the offer to pay customers' speeding fines to commemorate the release of Burnout 2. It should come as little surprise that Acclaim would feature on a list of companies known for shoddy licenced games, especially given its long time association with LJN Toys, who just miss the cut themselves.

Early on in their career Acclaim managed to pick up both The Simpsons and Spider-Man licences, both of which were at the height of popularity, and proceeded to utterly fail to take advantage of the vast opportunities those licences provided.

While the company did occasionally manage to strike gold, such as with the N64 Turok games and their 32-Bit WWF titles, their output generally remained fairly poor even as they grew into one of the larger publishing houses of the era.

The Worst Game - Bart and the Space Mutants appeared on many different consoles, under a number of different publishers. Acclaim published the NES version, which is perhaps the most infamous of the lot. For a game aimed primarily at children, it provided an unfair challenge that even the most seasoned of gamers quickly turned their noses up at.