Accolade, Inc. (later Infogrames North America, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher based in San Jose, California.

However, technical issues undermined the release of Bubsy 3D (1996), and Jack Nicklaus 5 (1997) was considered a commercial disappointment, despite positive reviews.

[3] Activision became the first developer to operate independently of the console companies and one of the few firms to survive the video game crash of 1983, though they still posted a US$18 million loss the following year.

[2] This allowed Accolade to take advantage of the new technology of floppy disks, which were less expensive to manufacture than cartridges and did not require licensing fees to be paid to the console companies.

The pair hired chief executive officer Tom Frisina to handle managerial duties, and they each began to work on their own launch titles.

Their goal for their first titles was to think beyond the gaming medium and draw inspiration from other forms of popular entertainment, including television and film.

[6] Accolade recruited Mike Lorenzen from Activision to create the science fiction game Psi 5 Trading Company (1985),[6] drawing inspiration from Star Trek.

[7] Artech also created the combat flight simulation game The Dam Busters (1984), inspired by the eponymous classic war film.

[9] Accolade partnered with other publishing companies such as U.S. Gold to distribute their games in Europe, before later switching to Electronic Arts (EA).

[10] Distinctive Software, another Canadian developer who had previously ported Accolade's games to other computer systems, created Test Drive.

[7] The game pioneered the concept of driving exotic cars at the risk of being chased by the police[6] and led to a series that would become one of Accolade's most successful.

[7] Accolade also published the Star Control series of games, created by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford.

[20][21] By the early 1990s, Accolade observed the rise of a new generation of gaming consoles, and sought to shift towards a market they had previously abandoned.

[6] In 1990, Accolade CEO Allan Epstein expressed his opinion that the growing console market was both an opportunity and a challenge, since both the technology and audience differed from that of the computer.

Alan Miller estimated that "the commercial damage associated with this injunction ultimately proved to be somewhere around US$15 to US$25 million",[23] leading the company to report major losses in 1993.

[26] Accolade hired a new CEO in 1994, recruiting the former head of FAO Schwarz, Peter Harris, to help them attract much-needed investment.

[26] Alan Miller initially stayed on as chairman and head of product development, but quit the company later in the year to work in medical software, marking the end of the founders' influence.

[6][26] Harris led the company's efforts to build a new management team and secure new financing from Time Warner, before leaving to become CEO of the San Francisco 49ers in 1995.

[28] The company expanded the Bubsy series with multiple titles released on several consoles, including Sega, Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, and eventually PlayStation.

[31] Instead, the publisher licensed Reiche and Ford's copyrighted character designs to make Star Control 3 (1996) with a different development team.

[40] The success of Test Drive: Off Road led the company to focus more heavily on consoles, which meant abandoning a massively multiplayer online game project.

[38] By the end of the year, Accolade released their sequels to Test Drive as scheduled, while canceling their plans for a fourth Star Control game.

[44] French publisher Infogrames purchased Accolade in April 1999, as part of the European company's strategy to gain a distribution network in North America.