Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City

Overview

Sculptured Software was founded in 1984 by Bryan Brandenburg, George Metos, and Peter Adams, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The studio originally specialized in port work before moving on to developing games of its own. It would eventually be acquired and renamed by Acclaim Entertainment before being shut down in 2002.

Business History

Brandenburg was voted the company's first president, and Metos the company's first vice-president. The company's first published titles were releases for home microcomputer systems such as the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit systems. At this time their specialty was porting other companies games from one microcomputer system to another. This was necessary because different companies computers ran different operating systems, often by necessity as they also used different microprocessors.

Metos moved up from Vice President to President in 1987. Shortly after that they published several major ports, notably Broderbund's Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf to the Amiga, as well as porting the original Mario Bros. to the Atari ST. Their “original” game they developed, instead of porting to another platform, was the first home console version of Monopoly , which was published for the NES by Parker Brothers in 1991. That year also saw the release of Roger Clemens MVP Baseball for the NES.

The company continued to operate as an independent entity until 1995, which saw the developer working on a string of wrestling titles with the WWF license for Acclaim. At that time, the company was bought out by Acclaim, and the Utah-based developed became known first as Iguana West, and eventually Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City.

After the merger, Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City continued to work on WWF titles, only now directly under the Acclaim banner. They would also work on some ports for major titles, including the ports of Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and Mortal Kombat III for the Super Nintendo, as well as the home console ports of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for both the Genesis and the SNES.

The studio was finally closed down by Acclaim in 2002 when Acclaim's financial problems no longer made keeping the studio open economical. After the studio was closed, its operations were shifted to Acclaim Studios Austin.

Studios Run By Alumnus

Shortly following the merger, several developers left the company and formed the Salt Lake City studio Avalanche Software, which would go on to develop Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub Zero, the PlayStation port of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and the Tak games before being acquired by Disney.

After George Metos left Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City in 1997, he founded Kodiak Interactive, which would go on to develop WCW Mayhem and WCW Backstage Assault, as well as Circus Maximus: Chariot Wars, and the Monsters, Inc. game for the PS2.

Co-founder Hal Rushton went on to found Saffire, which focused on porting console games for other systems, including ports of the Oddworld games to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Their last title was the licensed game Van Helsing in 2004.