Oh boy. Funny thing is while I was a gamer in the 80s, I was still a pure PC gamer when I took the job (Vic20/C-64/Apple, x86, etc).
Answered a blind ad in my local newspaper right out of college so I had no idea the company. Couldn't get a job. Was selling dishes for an MLM at the time (dont ask). Acclaim had just gone public and the parking lot was fully of fancy sports cars. Got an entry level job in the finance department dealing with companies that wanted product. Some of the big ones I remember like Mortal Combat, Simpsons, Double Dragon, I remember dealing with Mega Man but I don't think we made it.
The very attractive head of investor relations took me to the warehouse and gave me an NES system and a massive box of cartridges and said I needed to become familiar with our games and the competitor games. So I did play some stuff, but remained a PC snob (sorry). Ended up dating that investment girl a few month later. She was 30 and I was 22 and living at home. lol. Being in finance I didn't get to go to CES or do much on the gaming end.
Some of our games were really shit, but it was all about licensing big names and churning it out. The licensing part was actually really interesting to me and I wanted in on that. More on that later.
Being a computer nerd at heart I started helping other employees with their computer issues and problems which were basically networked Apple computers at that time. About 8 months in, the girl I was dating talked me up to the bosses Greg Fishbach and Jim Scoroposki and floated the idea to have me trained externally and take over the IT department which was run by a kid a few years older than me, but really incompetent. Problem was I was already applying to law school to try and get in on the licensing side.
So I had a choice. Law school or IT?? This was really pre-internet and dot coms, so I honestly thought the future of IT was fixing broken PCs and local networking issues (I really had no clue). So I quit to go to law school. The girl wanted to get really serious, but I was starting another 3 years of school and school loans. Ended it with her at the start and later met my (now) wife in law school at the end of our first year.
Postscript: Graduated law school and worked for a big real estate company in NYC. Didn't get that licensing job. HOWEVER, Acclaim was struggling and a new company called GT Interactive (formerly Goodtimes Home Video) had taken on a bunch of ex-Acclaim employees. Turns out the GT office was right across the street from my office on 5th Ave AND my ex now worked for them (we stayed on good terms). She got me an interview with the General Counsel who need help...in licensing!! My dream job. PC Gaming! Licensing! So I go to the interview and he asks me if I've heard about first person shooters and multiplayer gaming because he was working on something which was going to be really big. Turns out it was
UNREAL. I knew enough about it to discuss, but then he threw me a curveball and asked some really technical licensing questions. I tried to BS it but I knew I was sunk. This was NYC. He could pick big firm licensing lawyers by the dozen. I was done. I ended up doing well, but never worked in gaming again.
tl;dr worked for Acclaim in finance out of college. Got offered a job running their IT. Quit for law school. 5 or 6 years later had a shot at a dream job for GT Interactive and fucked up the interview. Happily running a legal dept for a big company in FL now.
