Canadian production company Liquid Media Group has acquired the rights to 65 classic intellectual properties that originally belonged to the legendary Acclaim Entertainment.
Liquid Media has acquired a nice chunk of classic game IPs like Bubble Bobble, various Bust A Move titles, and oddly enough – the game adaptation for Street Fighter: The Movie, which is the live-action movie based on the Street Fighter game franchise starring Jean Claude Van-Damme, Raul Julia, and others.
The rights were originally purchased by Throwback Entertainment back in 2006, who sold the 65 properties to Liquid Media. Throwback has been re-purposing older games themselves, with re-releases of titles like TrickStyle for PC and Extreme-G 2, also for PC.
It’s worth pointing out that Liquid Media does not wholly own the rights to these IPs, in fact they only own the rights to the stock-keeping units (SKUs) of the various titles.
This means they have partial rights to reproduce the games but original copyright holders, like Taito’s iconic Bubble Bobble, will present big legal hoops for Liquid Media, as Taito is now owned by Square Enix, and Acclaim Entertainment originally had only rights to publishing the 1996 PC port for Bubble Bobble, while the franchise rights still remain with Taito, and now Square Enix.
Naturally, each game will have to be assessed fully by Liquid Media to see how much use they can make of them with a re-release or something. Here’s the entire list of properties the company now owns the rights to:
- AD&D: Iron & Blood
- AFL Live 2003
- AFL LIVE: Premiership Edition
- AFL SIM 04
- AFL Sim 04 (Int’l)
- All Star Baseball 2000
- All Star Baseball 2001
- All Star Baseball 2002
- All Star Baseball 2003
- All Star Baseball 2004
- All Star Baseball 2005
- All Star Baseball 2006*
- All Star Baseball ‘97
- All Star Baseball ‘99
- Antz Racing
- Battle Monsters
- Big Foot
- Big Hurt Baseball
- Blast Lacrosse
- Brain Drain
- Bubble Bobble
- Bust A Move 1999
- Bust A Move 2
- Bust A Move 4
- Bust A Move Millennium
- College Slam
- Cutthroat Island
- Cyberoid
- Darius Gaiden
- Dirt Trax FX
- Dragonheart: Fire & Steel
- Ducati World Racing
- Foreman For Real
- Foreman’s KO Boxing
- Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball
- Galactic Attack
- George Foreman KO Boxing
- Impact Racing
- Jupiter Strike
- Killing Zone
- Kwirk
- Magic: The Gathering – Battlemage
- NBA Jam 1999
- NBA Jam 2000
- NBA Jam 2001
- NBA Jam 2002
- NBA Jam Extreme
- NFL Quarterback Club
- NFL Quarterback Club 1996
- NFL Quarterback Club 1997
- NFL Quarterback Club 1998
- NFL Quarterback Club 1999
- NFL Quarterback Club 2000
- NFL Quarterback Club 2001
- NFL Quarterback Club 2002
- NFL Quarterback Club Challenge
- NHL Breakaway 1998
- NHL Breakaway 1999
- Street Fighter: The Movie
- Striker
- Striker 1996
- Super Bust A Move
- Tee-Off
- Virtual Open Tennis
- Wetrix
Liquid Media noted they have plans to remaster these classics with improved graphics that somehow build upon the original releases.
Which of these classic IPs would you like to see remastered, re-released, or possible rebooted? Sound off in the comments below!