Originally founded by Greg Fischbach, Robert Holmes, and Jim Scoroposki from a storefront in Oyster Bay in 1987, the company built a global development team through a series of acquisitions during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In the early 1980s, Greg Fischbach was employed by the American video game company Activision, where he worked alongside Robert Holmes and Jim Scoroposki.

This naming convention was a common practice among new companies founded by ex-Activision employees, as the founders of Activision had similarly adopted this strategy when they left Atari.

Additionally, they published several games from companies that, at the time of publication, did not have an American branch, such as Technōs Japan's Double Dragon II: The Revenge and Taito's Bust-a-Move series.

[12] Later that year, the company acquired a minority interest in the FMV gaming studio Digital Pictures and began releasing its titles through Acclaim Distribution.

However, after failing to replicate the success of World Championship Wrestling (WCW)'s THQ/AKI games during the Monday Night Wars, the WWF announced in April 1998 that it would not renew its deal with Acclaim, opting instead to sign a joint-publishing agreement with Jakks Pacific and THQ after WCW's contract with the latter publisher expired and signed a deal with rival Electronic Arts.

[17] In October 1999, Acclaim signed a contract with Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) to publish video games based on the promotion.

Among the titles under development at the UK studios were Emergency Mayhem, ATV Quad Power Racing 3, The Last Job, Interview with a Made Man, and Kung Faux.

The following month, in June, Turok owners Classic Media announced that they had terminated Acclaim's video game rights to the franchise, also due to non-payment of royalties.

Cousens sought to reopen the studios under a new publisher provisionally named "Exclaim" on October 11,[30] but his efforts were hindered by a lawsuit and legal disputes over Acclaim's intellectual property, with both US and UK administrators asserting their claims.

[37] In 2006, Throwback Entertainment acquired more than 50 of Acclaim's games and committed to bringing titles such as Re-Volt, Extreme-G, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance, Vexx, Fur Fighters, and many other franchises into the next generation and beyond.

[39] In April 2007, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, then the North American distributor for Codemasters' products, announced that the British publisher had acquired the rights to Emergency Mayhem.

This acquisition primarily included installments in the NBA Jam, AFL Live, All-Star Baseball, and NFL Quarterback Club franchises, as well as games from Japanese developer Taito that Acclaim had published outside of Japan.

[48] However, like most of Acclaim's video games during the company's final years, BMX XXX sold poorly and was criticized for its sexual content and subpar gameplay.

Dave Mirra publicly disowned the game, stating that he had no involvement in the decision to include nudity, and he subsequently sued Acclaim out of concern for being associated with BMX XXX.

In 2007, one of several class action suits filed on behalf of stockholders was won, enabling some employees to recover a portion of the stock that had vested.