Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 127

Zapping All the Way to the Bank Robert Holmes left Acclaim's executive vice president and Gregory Fischbach Photos by Alan Hlavenka Nowaday graphic i Joe Calviello tendo Just four years after the disaster the video-game market is back and amazingly given the crash said to be worth $3 billion Nintendo alone has sold 19 million machines Its forecast for 1989 is that 50 million game cartridges will be sold A new Nintendo offering the portable GameBoy and its two-inch cartridges has the industry abuzz all over again Nintendo was almost solely responsible for the new surge The century -old Japanese company whose roots are in playing cards decided it could bring its carefully controlled video-game system to the United States Instead of the open-door policy that swamped Atari Nintendo has a security chip that prevents its games from being copied and gives it control over the number and quality of games introduced for its system It now allows about 45 companies to market its titles no more than five a year for each firm This means that licensees such as Acclaim have incentive and the breathing room to push for big-sellers The licensees pay Nintendo to manufacture the cartridges good game in home-computer software can do 50000 to 100000 Fischbach says good game on Nintendo can do in excess of a million units because you copy it Nintendo has done is planted a flagpole and everybody has rallied around it There is a lot of criticism about the way they operate in business but no argument that made a business where no business The question is whether Nintendo which holds 80 percent of the market has brought to video games what IBM and brought years ago to their respective industries: a monopoly Lawsuits have been filed to force Nintendo to let everyone in This of course suggests a return to the feeding frenzy of five years ago and is one of the risks facing licensees Two years ago 97 percent of products were Nintendo-related Now the percentage is closer to 80 still much too high if anything happens to the Nintendo relationship Acclaim makes its own hand-held games and THE MEN YOU SEE ABOVE keep your kids up at night away from chores and homework and off the baseball diamond Somebody has to do it They develop video games for Nintendo Entertainment Systems the colossus of the video-game market like having a key to the bank Their company Acclaim Entertainment Inc of Oyster Bay is not even three years old but in that short time it went from nothing to $91 million in profit and $69 million in sales The automotive equivalent is zero to 60 in 6 seconds Their video games are big sellers: Wrestlemania a million in seven months Tiger-Heli a million since late 1987 Rambo 600000 and still selling Wizards and Warriors 750000 and going strong Double Dragon II and Irons word not yet shipped and getting a Btrong response Nine games out and four to be shipped for Christmas and the follow-up season Plus peripherals would say the business blossomed beyond pur wildest says Gregory Fischbach co-chairman of the company looks like the future of this business is very And it pays very well Last year Fischbach received more than $1 million in salary and bonuses Before you resign your current job however realize that business could be as risky as its adventures It takes six pages of the annual financial-disclosure form to list the potential perils And forget that in the early 1980s the video-game industry went from 60 back to zero in an instant At the time Atari was the leader and the market was open to all comers Battalions of developers and manufacturers pumped out games faster than they could be absorbed Ultimately the games became shoddier than consumers would accept In 1982 the frenzied market get enough video games and sales amounted to $3 billion Retailers doubled and tripled their orders Manufacturers made anything as Fischbach says on the premise that you could do 100000 units with one widget put three widgets out and you could do It was a poor fantasy that consumers buy By 1985 sales plummeted to 100 million The video-game era seemed to have passed explains Fischbach who then headed the international division of Activision Inc one of the players that foundered were dealing with an uncontrolled market The whole thing kind of imploded upon itself contrary to how Nin board games played in conjunction with a VCR And it wants to diversify even more into other forms of home entertainment or acquire them One false start was a $60-million offer for Marvel Comics which was rejected They talk of 35-percent growth a year are not a programing company We are like a film studio" says Fischbach who has considerable entertainment experience along with time in the Peace Corps and as a lawyer in the Department of Justice In Los Angeles he was a music lawyer and agent for such rock groups as Crosby Stills and Nash the Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs He left because he want to be 55 years old standing backstage snapping my fingers to make things happen the way they're supposed to After Activision he was president of RCA International for eight months until he was fired after a takeover Acclaim works a lot like Hollywood For a share of the revenue outside developers turn an Acclaim concept into a game going through a bits-and-picces process much like making a movie Acclaim pumps up the games with links to characters beloved by boys Hulk Hogan is just one get ready for Arnold Schwarzenegger and then backs them with zoomy promotion at both the wholesale and retail ends Competition for shelf space is as intense as it is for notice by the prime users millions of boys age's 8 to 14 Fischbach is 47 Co-chairman James Scoroposki is 41 Robert Holmes executive vice president is 36 These are the men of middle age and thereabouts bringing you Qybernoid ultimate fighting machine" Knight Rider speed and Bigfoot crash and bash Tiger-Heli a war-crazed Ironsword evil wizard Role-playing fantasy adventure violence very difficult to do a game called Rambo and not have a war Fischbach says The folks at Acclaim see these as no more or less insidious than the proclivities of boys tell me the immediate value of or the counters could argue that for a long Do they play the games themselves? Sometimes And how about two sons? You kidding? Of course Too much by one you played baseball 12 hours a day too he says encouraged him to do other.