One thing that says a lot about me and my life is the fact that on the day I first met my wife, I was wearing an Animaniacs shirt – for those wondering, the one where the Warner siblings look at a statue of Pinky and the Brain, with the inscription “Trusted Leaders.” Animaniacs remains one of my favorite, if not the favorite, things ever placed on television. I’ve practically set aside July 26, 2006 (the date Animaniacs volume 1 and Pinky and the Brain volume 1 come out on DVD) as a religious holiday to be celebrated by feasts of cheese and Swedish meatballs. You’d be hard-pressed to keep me from anything related to the show. Quite obviously, it was inevitable that I’d catch wind of the appearance of the Warner brothers, with sister Dot, on the Gamecube, in Animaniacs: the Great Edgar Hunt. I simply had to know if it would tide over my yen for all things Animany and totally zany whilst waiting for that magical day in July.
To begin, the plot begins before the handing out of the Edgars, the game’s version of the Oscars (Ignition Entertainment obviously forgot the proper usage in modern Warner Bros. cartoons is Schloscar). Cyril Coupe DeVille, a director with no talent, thieving tendencies, and slightly more esteem than Uwe Boll, interrupts the event, however. He steals the Edgars, and is about to make his escape when he crashes into the Warner Bros. water tower – which naturally releases Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. You know, if I had known that we’d get more Warner hijinks by crashing bad directors into a water tower, I would have loaded up Boll onto a blimp and sent him crashing years ago.
Now, the fun thing about the skeleton of the plot is that, much like the show, the Warners don’t care a single bit for it. They don’t go out of their way to get the Edgars – people just keep handing them over to them while they go about with their usual escapades. Just like in the cartoon, the plot isn’t there for any deep or cerebral moments. It merely exists as an excuse for the Warner trio to act up. This perfectly mirrors the cartoon, and it shows that the writers for the game actually have a healthy respect for the original show.
This also comes clear in every cinema scene, in which the Warners interact with various non-player characters to get hints or missions. While it never crosses the boundaries of an E rating, much like the show, they stretch the boundaries of what they can get away with. Suggestive comments are made (including variants of the infamous “Hello Nurse!” catcall), the jokes fly fast and loose (Wakko quite proudly calls himself the psychologically unbalanced one), and the fourth wall is cruelly abandoned (yes, they know full well they’re in a video game). You’ll know that the scenario designers were quite big fans when you hear the immortal line, “Wait, that’s not a chainsaw-wielding maniac! It’s a giant chicken!”
However, this leads to one of the weaknesses of the game. Sure, the essence of the Warners is captured well. Pinky and the Brain appear for mini-games (with several classic riffs in there as well), and Chicken Boo hides out on every level. But by and large, most of the Animaniacs crew is absent from the game. Truth be told, other than the brief appearances by Chicken Boo, Pinky, and the Brain, you see almost none of the classic characters from the show. Dr. Scratchandsniff briefly appears along with Hello Nurse, Ralph and Mr. Plotz are heard off-camera during the ending, and that’s it. No Rita. No Runt. No Goodfeathers. No Katie Ka-Boom. No Slappy the Squirrel. No Hip Hippos. Not the Randy Beaman kid. Heck, you don’t even see the resulting screw-ups that keep Pinky and the Brain from taking over the world.
That’s not even getting into how many bits about the Warners are absent. Dot never has an impromptu Poetry Corner. Wakko never has a potty emergency or comments on his lack of pants. Yakko never confuses the heck out of anyone with fast talk. That’s not even getting into the sight gags that aren’t used. You never have to hear anyone calling out “The dragon… the dragon… the dragon…” despite a level with a dragon. You never see a single anvil at all, which makes no sense at all. And Ignition, please, you couldn’t have used the Wheel of Morality? Not even during the ending? Not once? Look, the jokes and the humor that were there were good, don’t get me wrong. But with so much material that was begging to be used, so much felt missing.
So the game has sparks of funny, but doesn’t quite live up to its source material. That’s still miles better than most licensed games, right? Unfortunately, the game play itself falls into every bad cliché that populates these titles. The control itself is a bit imprecise – the controller doesn’t always respond immediately to commands, hit detection is spotty in the extreme, and platforms are very poorly defined. For most 3D platformers, this would be killer, and Animaniacs is hardly an exception. More often than not, you’ll find yourself losing health simply because you can’t tell how close your Warner sibling is to the danger. It’s a good thing that the game gives you unlimited lives and continues, or else this would be impossible.
In part because of the unlimited continues, though, the game isn’t so hard as it is annoying. This is further complicated by frequent areas that force you into bad camera angles (a favorite of every developer working on a 3D platformer) and a frightening dependence on invisible walls. Honestly, the levels wouldn’t feel nearly as poorly laid-out if they only made clear where each accessible and inaccessible area sat. Constantly guessing whether or not you can go anywhere is a sure recipe for anger and frustration, and I can’t believe that a game released in 2005 is still falling for the same design flaws that people complained about 8 or 9 years ago.
One final flaw lies in the way they set up each Warner’s abilities. For the most part, the three are clones of each other, with only one differentiating move to distinguish them that you have to obtain after you recruit the sibling in question (among the classic gags Ignition forgot was that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot have the cartoon ability to pull out anything necessary from their bag). Yakko gets bombs, which open up some areas and are good for fighting enemies. Wakko gets a shovel that digs up things found everywhere in the game’s levels. And Dot? She gets a limbo skirt that is used exactly four times in the game – way to promote subtle sexism, Ignition. I understand that each Warner should have some shared moves, but there should be more to differentiate them in play. Have Wakko able to eat, well, nearly anything. Dot could always call upon assistance from the pet she keeps in other people’s pockets – you know, the one covered in fur and razor-sharp fangs. As for Yakko – he was the freaking Solid Snake of cartoon characters, and the ringleader of the Warner siblings. You should only wonder what he shouldn’t do for game balance reasons. The already frustrating gameplay is bogged down by the lack of variety in your choices.
For the most part, I will give credit for the graphics. Although Yakko, Wakko, and Dot look a little too shiny in cinema scenes, they are rendered fairly faithfully and sharply, and their animations are modeled very closely on the cartoon’s classic look. Moreover, the backgrounds echo not only the design aesthetic of the Animaniacs show, but that of the Looney Tunes that Animaniacs often called to. This also shows in the design of the random characters you meet as you travel along, clear descendants of many background characters found in Warner Bros. animation history. My biggest complaint, I suspect, is related to the poor definitions of space and solid matter – there are quite a few areas in the game where clipping is a huge issue, and nearly half of your character can be swallowed by a wall that isn’t quite as solid as it should be.
The game’s sound is another mixed bag. First, the good news – the game brings back the original voice actors that brought Yakko, Wakko, and Dot to us in the first place. In addition, the voice actor responsible for the Brain also returns (Pinky was done by the same gentleman who did Yakko), so the five principals that do appear in the game sound like they always did. The voices are quite clear, and they still have the zest and inflection that made each character classic in the first place. The extra voices in the game are ably done as well, including the best Woody Allen impersonation ever found in a video game. Although I doubt many people who play the game are really up on Allen, those that are will appreciate how well he’s caricatured in this game. Now if only they had thought to include Mr. Director/the Clown (the obvious spoof of Jerry Lewis), then it could have been a laugh riot. About the only sad part is that the voice talents are never mentioned by name in the credits. To Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Tress MacNeille, and Maurice LaMarche, my apologies for the snub on behalf of a gamer and a proud member of the Please Please Please Get A Life Foundation.
The flip side, though, is that the actual music actually makes an Animaniacs fan cry. First off, they foul up the main Animaniacs theme, and they play said screw-up frequently throughout the game. Seriously, you got the license from Warner Brothers. You reunited the original team of voice actors. The ones who actually sung the original theme, may I remind you. The ones who also sang immortal tunes like “Yes, Brothers Warner We,” “The Anvil Song,” and “The Goodbye Song.” And you couldn’t get the rights to use any of the original tunes at all? Instead, you simply use insipid “themes” which sound like generic music used in backgrounds of movies and a lousy perversion of the original Animaniacs theme? I honestly can’t believe it. However, it does make this the first game where you’ll actually turn up the voice acting and turn off the music, which is more than a little odd.
Perhaps the most fitting coda is in the ending. The game, a glorified collection platformer in the vein of Rare’s N64 work, only requires you to collect 37 of the 45 Edgars scattered throughout the game to beat it. That’s fine, of course, but naturally an Animaniacs freak and hardcore gamer like myself had to collect everything. I did so, and you know what the difference in the ending is? Absolutely nothing. Face it, once you get the 36 Edgars needed to face off against the final boss, the only reason you might have for playing more is to see a few more cinema scenes and one-liners in the game. Ignition apparently felt it needed to wrap up production and not give an extra reward to those whom actually worked to clear their entire game.
I could actually excuse Animaniacs: the Great Edgar Hunt more easily if it had just went the THQ route – take a license, throw in some generic levels built before the license was obtained, and let it run its course. Lazy, yes, but almost what you’d expect out of a license. Ignition manages something much different with this game. It’s clear that everyone involved was a huge fan of Animaniacs – you can tell from how hard they worked to get the animation right to rounding up the original voice crew. When the game manages to find its groove, it’s absolutely hilarious and incredibly fun. But between those moments of inspired lunacy and brilliance are vast half-hours of monotony. The great moments in the game seem to underline more that there was so much more potential left untapped. There are a couple of Animaniacs die-hards, like myself, that will glean some joy out of this game. But for the vast majority, it’s one step towards a great licensed game, which only serves to highlight where it falls deficient.
