Ballistic

From Sega Retro


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Ballistic was a publishing label created by Accolade. It was presumably created due to contractual issues with Nintendo, allowing the company to publish more games for Sega systems than Nintendo would have otherwise allowed (similar to Acclaim and Flying Edge).

The Ballistic brand name was used for all of Accolade's Sega Mega Drive releases prior to the Sega v. Accolade lawsuit (bar Ishido: The Way of Stones). Every Ballistic title before this period was produced without a license from Sega, and was thus manufactured independently, with games shipping on irregular cartridge designs and in multi-region cardboard boxes. Unlike Flying Edge, the Ballistic name made its way onto other systems, such as the TurboGrafx-16 port of Turrican and the SNES port of Test Drive II, though was predominantly associated with the Mega Drive.

Around the time of the lawsuit, the Ballistic brand was temporarily dropped, and Accolade began to publish games it had developed for the console (still without a license) with Accolade branding (including for some re-released Ballistic titles). This continued after the lawsuit, though now Accolade were able to use official Sega branding.

The Ballistic brand name still made an appearance, publishing third-party games in the North American region (though this time, with a license). It was responsible for publishing two games in the Mega Hit Series - those developed by Headgames.

Softography

(* denotes an unlicensed game)