Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game publisher based in Glen Cove, New York. 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.

Following disappointing financial results in its 2003 fiscal year, Acclaim filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on September 1, 2004. The properties owned by Acclaim were subsequently auctioned off to various parties, most notably Howard Marks, a former Activision CEO, launched Acclaim Games which continued to exist until 2010 when Playdom acquired and closed the company. A group of investors launched a new company using the Acclaim trademark in 2025.

In the early 1980s, Greg Fischbach was employed by the American video game company Activision, where he worked alongside Robert Holmes and Jim Scoroposki. After leaving Activision, he joined RCA Records, which was subsequently acquired by Bertelsmann, leaving Fischbach unemployed. In 1987, he met with Scoroposki in Oyster Bay, where Scoroposki owned a sales rep company, to discuss a potential joint venture. After Scoroposki suggested that they re-enter the video game industry, they contacted Holmes to join them, and the three co-founded Acclaim Entertainment. Acclaim did not secure any venture financing and was entirely financed by Fischbach and Scoroposki. In its early years, Acclaim operated exclusively as a video game publisher, either outsourcing the development of its video games to external developers or localizing existing titles from overseas. However, as the company expanded, it acquired several independent studios, including Iguana Entertainment of Austin, Texas; Probe Entertainment of London, England; and Sculptured Software of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The company's name was chosen to ensure it was alphabetically positioned above its co-founder's former employer, Activision, as well as above Accolade, another company established by former Activision employees. 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.^{[citation needed]}

Many of Acclaim's products featured licenses from popular comics, television series, and movies. Fischbach noted that during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the video game market was less discerning, with specialized gaming publications exerting minimal influence on consumer opinion. Consequently, leveraging a popular license became one of the few reliable strategies to persuade retailers to stock a game. In its early years, the company entered into an agreement with Interactive VCR Games Inc., whose bestsellers included NFL Quarterback, to produce interactive VCR games, as well as expand into the handheld game market. Acclaim was also responsible for porting many of Midway's arcade games in the early to mid-1990s, including the Mortal Kombat series. Additionally, it 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.

In 1990, Acclaim partnered with TV producer Saban Entertainment and distributor Bohbot Entertainment to launch Video Power, which subsequently premiered in the fall of 1990.

In December 1993, Acclaim signed a distribution deal with the European Spanish branch of Buena Vista Home Video, allowing the company to distribute its titles in Spain.

In May 1994, Tom Petit, former president of Sega Enterprises USA, who had worked at Sega for nine years, became the president of Acclaim's coin-op division.