Acclaim gets up from the mat

HOWARD MARKS, former Acclaim executive, is planning to put the gloves back on, and step into the ring once again.

The new Acclaim Games will focus on giving North Americans and Europeans the chance to try their hand at Asian MMOs. Marks bought the company's name last year for a cool $100K, and expects to market wares to the nearly 80 million 9 to 13 year-olds on either side of the Atlantic.

Gamespot reports, "The company will license game content from Korea, then localize and support it for Western markets."

And their first release will be B.O.U.T., which economically functions something like a collectible card game. You can play for free, but if you get more into it, you can purchase in-game items one at a time (for real live moolah) and outfit your robot character with ever-better weaponry.

Right now, B.O.U.T. is owned by Korea's NHN Corporation, which has been around since 1999, when it was called Navercom. They merged with Hangame Communications in 2000 and took on the name Next Human Network, or NHN.

If you're interested in Acclaims future projects, my guess is, you can look at NHN's current games. Just a thought for the forward-looking. µ