Accolade (1994-1996)
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Accolade, Inc. (later Infogrames North America, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher headquartered in San Jose, California. Founded by Allen Miller and Bob Whitehead, who had previously co-founded Activision in 1979. The company would've been best known for HardBall!, Jack Nicklaus, and Test Drive series had it not been for Michael Berlyn pitching the Bubsy series to them.
In 1999, Infogrames acquired Accolade as part of its strategy to become more global, transforming it into a North American branch called Infogrames North America. Game publisher Tommo purchased several related assets, working with a company Billionsoft to revive the Accolade label and its properties, beginning with the Bubsy series.
Bad Qualities
NOTE: most of the problems were caused by Bubsy franchise, the company overall was still good.
- Their game Bubsy 3D was so bad that it completely ruined the company's reputation as a whole.
- Let's get the cat out of the bag, they flanderized Bubsy after his first game, which is the main reason why Bubsy is considered an annoying protagonist.
- Not to mention they had Rob Paulsen voice Bubsy instead of Brian Silva, which is why Rob Paulsen considers Bubsy as his worst voice aside from Coconut Fred, Lani Manella's voice for Bubsy wasn't much better in Bubsy 3D.
- Not to mention Bubsy wasn't even that good of a character in the first place. He was nothing more than an annoying Hollywood star with no personality other than being scared, saying many annoying themes, & being weak as a brick.
- They did many stupid things to advertise Bubsy 3D and give it praise, for example.
- They used PSXtreme's positive review and their Golden X Award to make people believe that this game got positive reviews across many magazines, but in reality, Bubsy 3D's reviews were negative.
- When releasing the game in Europe, They had Telstar distribute the game, in fact, the European version just focused on pictures, due to Telstar knowing that the game was terrible.
- Speaking of Bubsy 3D, they had Christopher Reese, one of the lead programmers of Bubsy 3D, to release the game of how it is, instead of re-doing the game from scratch, showing how strict and unfair Accolade is. This is why Christopher admitted the game was crap.
- Despite Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales using the source code of Bubsy, they released the game after Bubsy 2 in December of 1994, making the 3rd game feel rushed.
- They are infamous for allowing Calico Entertainment to make the Bubsy pilot, which was considered one of the worst cartoon pilots of all time aside from the Battletoads pilot.
- Aside from that, they released other bad or average games around this time such as Ballz 3D, Pitball & Speed Racer in My Most Dangerous Adventures.
Good Qualities
- In the earlier years, the company used to be better, and after the Bubsy era was over, they started improving by releasing some good and well-received games, such as Test Drive 5, Test Drive 4, Redline, Test Drive Off-Road series, Hardball series, Deadlock series, Star Control 3, Big Air Snowboarding, Jack Nicklaus series and Eradicator.
- Even bought by Infogrames they made games such as Slave Zero, Test Drive 6 (depending on your point view), Test Drive Off-Road 3, Demolition Racer and Test Drive Cycles.
- Basically they were still a tolerable company that was making a good games.