Animaniacs

The Good
This game is a licensed puzzle platformer based on the hugely successful and very funny Saturday morning cartoon. The graphics are great with really nice animation. It is a very colourful game with detailed backgrounds and large and varied environments. The music is very nice and draws inspiration from the movies. There's mock Star Wars John Williams style orchestration, haunted house music and lots of goofy fairground style cartoon music. All of these tracks are crisp and free from distortion which plagued some games on the system.

The Bad
The game is just too hard for its own good. The game uses a star system where you need to collect 100 stars to gain a life. I know the Sonic series uses a similar system with rings, but with Sonic it is possible to gain 100 or more rings on the first two stages. With Animaniacs it is incredibly tough to gain one life; there are very few stars and the ones which there are are often difficult to reach or you need to risk your health to get to. The game also features a timer system of 500 seconds for each level, this is just annoying nonsense, totally unnecessary in a game from 1994 it makes it more akin to 1980s Arcade coin guzzlers. The puzzles are also very tedious after the first few times, every level has a box moving puzzle to reach a higher platform, while well designed it is just tedious after the first two stages. The controls are also a bit slippery for a game that require precise movements for some sections. This is a minor complaint though.

The Bottom Line
An also-ran platformer that gained a popular following at the time and seems fondly remembered by people who owned it at the time. If they played it again today and took off the rose tinted spectacles I'm sure they would rage-quit pretty quickly. The game is unnecessarily hard. That said it is well worth a 30 minute play for the atmosphere and humor; it's just not worth a full play through for the average gamer.