Accolade

Accolade

Founded: 1984
Defunct: 2000
T-series code: T-119
Merged with: Infogrames, Inc. (2000)
Merged into: Infogrames (1999)
Headquarters: San Jose, California, United States

Accolade, Inc. (Later known as Infogrames North America, Inc.) was formed in 1984 by Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead. The name was chosen mostly on the basis that their former place of employment, Activision, was based on an alphabetically higher name than Atari (which both of them worked at before co-founding Activision), and they wanted their name to be above Activision.

The company originally produced games for the home microcomputer market, but as the popularity of those systems waned, Accolade focused on PC and console development, including the NES, Mega Drive, SNES and PlayStation during those systems' popularity. All of Accolade's initial titles were developed in-house, but being a publisher as well as a developer, Accolade began to publish titles produced by other developers as well. By the mid-1990s, most of Accolade software development was done by third-party developers.

In October 1991, Accolade was served with a lawsuit regarding copyright infringement that eventually led to the concept of reverse engineering for interoperability purposes. Sega wanted to keep a hold on their consoles, and wanted all its games exclusive to Sega. Unwilling to conform to single platform use, Accolade engineers researched through reverse engineering on a way to produce titles for the Sega platform. Sega sued Accolade over the practice and won an initial injunction, forcing Accolade to remove all Genesis product from store shelves. Accolade, however, won on appeal and reached an out of court settlement with Sega that allowed Accolade to continue building their own Genesis cartridges but as an official licensee — however, Accolade still continued to produce unlicensed games (primarily those co-published with Ballistic).

Accolade did well in its early years, but by the 1990s, Accolade's sales suffered and management was forced to enact several rounds of lay-offs. Accolade was the entry point for Infogrames' North America expansion. The company was later renamed to Infogrames North America, Inc. and published Infogrames' games for the US market from then on. In 2000 Infogrames North America merged with Infogrames, Inc. and therefore Infogrames North America were folded into the latter.

In 2013, Tommo, Inc. acquired almost all of Accolade's properties from Atari during the bankruptcy sale, and the Accolade brand name now lives on in the hands of Tommo and publisher Billionsoft.

Softography

Mega Drive

Ishido: The Way of Stones (1990)
Mike Ditka Power Football (1991)
HardBall! (1991)
Star Control (1991)
Winter Challenge (1992)
The Duel: Test Drive II (1992)
Al Michaels Announces HardBall III (1993)
WarpSpeed (1993)
Jack Nicklaus' Power Challenge Golf (1993)
Gods (1993)
Summer Challenge (1993)
Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (1993)
Pelé! (1993)
Barkley Shut Up and Jam! (1994)
HardBall '94 (1994)
Combat Cars (1994)
Pelé II: World Tournament Soccer (1994)
Ballz 3D (1994)
Bubsy II (1994)
Unnecessary Roughness '95 (1994)
Zero Tolerance (1994)
Brett Hull Hockey '95 (1994)
Barkley Shut Up and Jam 2 (1995)
HardBall '95 (1995)
Unnecessary Roughness (unreleased)
Speed Racer in The Challenge of Racer X (unreleased)
Brett Hull Hockey (unreleased)
Matrix Prime (unreleased)
The New Breed (unreleased)
Fireteam Rogue (unreleased)

Saturn

HardBall 5 (unreleased)
Test Drive Off-Road (unreleased)
Bubsy 3D (unreleased)

Dreamcast

Pen Pen TriIceLon (1998) (as Infogrames North America)
Expendable (1999) (as Infogrames North America)
Slave Zero (1999) (as Infogrames North America)
Test Drive 6 (1999) (as Infogrames North America)
UEFA Striker (2000) (as Infogrames North America)
Wacky Races (2000) (as Infogrames North America)
Demolition Racer: No Exit (2000) (as Infogrames North America)

References

NEC Retro has more information related to Accolade.