Game over: Acclaim's assets up for auction

Anyone need 43,000 video game cartridges?

If you do feel the need to make such an investment, the opportunity has arrived. Next week, a Plainview, N.Y., auction house will begin selling off many former assets of Acclaim Entertainment, the video game maker that filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in early September.

At the top of the list of items going up for sale via auctioneer David R. Maltz & Co. is Acclaim's four-story, 71,600-square-foot headquarters building in Glen Cove, N.Y. The glittering concrete-and-glass structure officially goes up for auction on Monday, and it has already attracted a bid of $9.05 million.

Beyond the real estate, a laundry list of Acclaim's other possessions are also available on the auctioneer's site, including the whopping collection of video game cartridges and disks.

Amid the hodgepodge of office equipment and furniture one would expect to find at a corporate sale are a number of items that offer a window into the world of the game company before its demise. Some items--including antique desks and tables, clearly taken from its executives' digs--evidence Acclaim's era of profitability. Others, such as a room full of sporting goods and an array of stand-up video game kiosks, speak more to the company's once-light-hearted atmosphere.

Some of the goods are reminiscent of a gaudier time, when companies were more inclined to spend money on luxury items such as Sub-Zero refrigerators, Viking stoves and grandfather clocks. But for the most part, the auction reads like just another bankruptcy post-mortem, with a wide selection of conference tables, cubicle walls, photocopiers and ergonomically correct desk chairs.

The Acclaim auction will also constitute a liquidation of millions of dollars of IT equipment, including high-priced servers and networking equipment, as well as desktops, laptops and printers.