Accolade's tale is one of fallen glory. Founded in 1984 by Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead - the original founders of Activison. And the name Accolade was chosen because it came before Activision alphabetically. This was to prove that Accolade would be superior to their old company - which was named Activision because it would come before Atari.

Bob Whitehead left Accolade a short while after its creation, while Alan Miller stayed behind as the CEO.

The company soon became known for only producing and releasing top-notch games, and founded a huge dedicated fan base. Some of these titles, like the Test Drive series and the Hardball series, became popular series - and was the backbone of Accolade.

1992 was a turbulent year for Accolade, however, invovling a huge lawsuit from SEGA. The reason for this, was that Accolade was fed up with the high development fees charged by SEGA and Nintendo. So instead of paying the fees, Accolade simply re-engineered the SEGA Genesis and SNES machines. SEGA won the lawsuit, but Accolade appealed the judging and won in round 2.

(In case you aren't sure about re-engineering, it is the practice where you disassemble a machine to figure out how it works, then putting it together again using your own method. Just like a remix of a popular song.)

The downfall of Accolade, however, began a little earlier, in 1990, where they lost their focus and began to publish mediocre games from other companies. The fans lost interest in the company, and sales dropped immensly. During the aftermath of reduced sales and the SEGA lawsuit, Accolade tried to stay alive by focusing solely on Sports games and Simulations - hoping that Test Trive and Hardball, amongst other titles, would keep them up and running.

But it was too late, and Accolade fell into a downwards spiral. Sensing trouble, Alan Miller abandoned ship in 1995. The new captain was Peter Harris, who had a quick look at the company's finances before he quickly jumped after Alan Miller. This resulted in Jim Barnett taking over the company, and under his supervision Accolade managed to stay alive long enough for Infogrames to buy the rights in 1999.

Today, all the Accolade assets are owned by Atari/Infogrames.