The Animaniacs didn't stop at the 90s consoles and PCs however, even after the show wrapped up and the movie, "Wakko's Wish" was made. Several years after that, they picked up a little steam again and surprisingly had 2 more games made for them: One for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, and one for the home consoles.
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Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt was the first of them released after the movie and show in 2005, as a Gamecube game in September, then later as an Xbox game in October. The PlayStation 2 version that was also made earlier in June is Europe-only. After some more research, it was found that it was supposed to another game called "Animaniacs: Hollywood Hijinx", with similar levels and gameplay, even the same antagonist, but with a different publisher: SWING Entertainment. A gallery of pictures of the game I found looked like a beta version of it, but eventually it was said that that game had been supposedly cancelled due to the company going bankrupt in 2003. But Warthog didn't give up, they remade/finished it, found a different publisher, "Ignition Entertainment", and the name was changed to "The Great Edgar Hunt".
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From what I've seen from other reviews, the Gamecube version is said to be superior, but from what I can see in gameplay videos, they're all pretty much the same game, and the PS2 version just has different language options to choose. It features the original voice actors as well, so that's a bonus too. Unlike Home Alone for the PS2, it's actually relevant to the show it's based off of, so that's good to know.
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The plot here revolves around an overlooked and jealous director named C.C. Deville who threatens Thaddeus Plotz that if he doesn't get to make his movies, he'll melt down all of the "Edgars" he stole, which is a parody of the Oscars, even though in the Genesis version it was called a "Felix", and in the show I think they called it a "Schloscar", but whatever. His assistant crashes the blimp into the Water Tower, freeing the Warners in the process and scattering the Edgars all over the film lots. After that, the game begins. Notice that we never see Plotz's face during the conversation by the way, or even hear his voice until the very end.
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You start out playing as Yakko Warner in the Warner Movie Lot where the water tower crashed to the ground, looking for the other two siblings that separated from you, with Dot in the Wild West lot and Wakko in the Horror lot. The main Warner movie lot serves as the hub level of the game, but it looks nothing like the movie lot from the show, which is weird. Guess it got a massive renovation since the 90s or something, it looks more like a town than it does a movie lot.
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At the start of the game, you can only go to the Wild West film lot, as everything else is blocked off by the pieces of the water tower when the blimp crashed into it, until you rescue Dot and rebuild it, then you can rescue Wakko as well. The controls are fairly decent and responsive, and you can do a few new abilities off the bat, like hover after a triple jump of all things, do a spin attack like Crash Bandicoot, a ground bash, an overhead bonk when you're standing still, and so forth.
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Your goal is to collect all 45 Edgars in the game to 100% it, and 36 to get to the final boss, and Deville has the last one able to collect, meaning you only have to get 44. You can get Edgars from fighting bosses, finding them in special places, completing objectives and getting the specific collectibles in each lot, 300 in all, with an Edgar awarded at getting 125 of them, and another at getting all 300, on top of collecting other level-specific things to help get the Edgars. So in a way, it's a "Banjo-Kazooie"-like game with it being a collect-a-thon, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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You can get letters scattered around the lots that spell "ACME", some of them needing special items to get to, and that improves your max health which you'll need at times. You start with three apples for your health bar, and they remind you kinda like how the Zelda games did it, starting with three, depleted in pieces, each apple found restoring one full one in the bar and so on, and the ACME letters are like the heart pieces in that case. Each apple takes three hits before it's completely gone and faded, but with collecting all the letters, you can max it out to 9 apples. If you're able to go out of your way to find the letters, you'll be all set for pretty much anything, since most damage is static this time or at least coherently designed, as opposed to the Genesis game where the amount of health you had left could get confusing with those portraits.
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It's another platformer game like the last ones, but with more precise and refined control as opposed to the retro games, and the triple jump and glide helps a lot, especially with the "gliding long jump" trick. Moving around in the game feels amazing, their mobility is really impressive here. The three Warner siblings all have special abilities again here, with Yakko being able to use bombs on weak walls and against strong containers, Wakko being able to dig into the ground for items and secret areas with his shovel, and Dot being able to limbo into small-entranced, low-clearance areas with her hula outfit. Yakko's bomb can be used to attack strong enemies as well, but getting too close to the blast would hurt you, and the targeting reticle when trying to throw it moves on its own, and the bomb bounces upon landing when you do throw it, so timing is everything.
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But you need to get the corresponding special items to allow the Warners to use those abilities first. There's various other items you need to collect to progress as well, like suction cups to climb walls with special paw marks on them, night vision goggles to go into dark areas like caves and mines, otherwise a countdown forces you out; a snorkel and goggles to be able to dive underwater, a magnifying glass to find Chicken Boo in each lot to get more Edgars, and so on. One bad thing about that though is that it can take a long while to earn those skills by progressing and getting more Edgars and completing Pinky and the Brain minigames which we'll get to later on. But it's okay, since you can go back to the previous levels to pick up what you missed if you didn't have that particular item before. A flaw with one of the items though, the magnifying glass, is that after you find Chicken Boo in all the lots, it becomes USELESS for the rest of the game.
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Their humor is present and spot on, and their writing and comedy has aged kinda well, but since it's not the 90s anymore and people have gotten more sensitive to things for... Reasons, their usual comedy is toned down a slight notch, but it's still there and recognizable, even evolved with the audience in a way.
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The graphics are pretty good as well for mid-2000 standards, staying true to the designs from the show and such since this was the Animaniacs' first and only proper excursion into 3-D territory(With the exception of their Ten-Pin Alley game for PS1, but that was only a sports game based off the original version of "Ten-Pin Alley" and not the platformers their games were known for), but couldn't they be bothered to include more characters from the show? The only non-major ones that make constant appearances are Chicken Boo and Hello Nurse, even though they're in different costumes depending on the level; Scratchnsniff is only seen twice, Ralph and Plotz are only HEARD once; Slappy and Skippy Squirrel, Buttons and Mindy, Rita and Runt, The Hip Hippos, Katie Ka-Boom, the Randy Beaman kid, the Good Idea/Bad Idea family, and The Mime aren't in it AT ALL, and the rest are either barely referenced once or seen in in-game pictures, like the Goodfeathers or Minerva Mink. Even though it is very nice to see screenshots of the "Wakko's Wish" movie scattered around in that big building in the Warner lot if you want an easter egg, on top of several other "Warner-ized" portraits scattered around different levels, which is kind of cool.
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If you have the license and permission to make a game on the Animaniacs, don't you think that you would've gone all the way with them? Make them supporting or even background characters at least, like in the previous games, don't write them off completely for "Big Chief Bro Dude and the Generic Posse"! The ONLY characters that make a big role in this game outside of the Warners is Pinky and the Brain again in mostly easy mini games. Sometimes boring, but mostly harmless, and also has their funny, traditional humor intact as well. The password system is gone from before, replaced with a save feature, so continuing where you left off is easier than ever too, that activates whenever you enter a new area, get an Edgar and so on, compared to the previous games.
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The music in the levels and boss stages feel middling but serviceable and the sound design is okay but mostly just made up of stock sound effects you can now find online for free. The remade Animaniacs theme song you hear in the hub level and main menu is okay, but not really remade well, almost like they couldn't get the license for it, so they had to remake it. It feels like a remade version for an iOS or Android game, it's unrecognizable, like with the "Looney Tunes Dash!" game, the theme there also sounds hardly recognizable. Yes, the 16-bit versions on the SNES and Genesis sound better than this one, and actually sound more like the show than this, it just doesn't sound right. As stated before, if you have permission, you can USE IT, or at least remake it to where it actually sounds semi-similar. Also the levels here feel like a sort-of homage and seem similar to the SNES and Genesis games as well. They're the same genres, like Fantasy, Western, Adventure, Horror and so on. Not a bad thing at all, it just has that similar feeling to it.
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There's other flaws that are gameplay-based. First off, it doesn't hold your hand much, just like the Genesis version. Nothing's really marked with anything and there's not even a map, so you have to use your own wits to figure out where you're supposed to go and who to talk to. That could get annoying, especially if you're a kid trying to find your way around, you'd either go in circles or accidentally find someone to give you an Edgar. Another thing to know is that enemies can be too tough to beat at times, or at least, their vulnerable times are hard to notice. Once again, there's hardly any clear indicators, whether you need to wait until they have green stars on their heads meaning that they're stunned or tired, if they need bombs, if they need a spin attack, a ground bash/overhead bonk, if they need more than one hit to kill, if you need to sneak up on them first, if you need a specific item to beat them, etc.
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You're told what to do for the items and how to use them, but there's next to nothing telling you what to do for everything else, even some of the bosses, except through trial and error. No hints, leaving you to figure it out yourself. The Pinky & The Brain mini game in Spooky Crypts is insanely difficult too, and the lack of direction bites you in the bum when you don't know where to go and you end up getting killed over and over by pumpkin bombs and fire sprites, and you die with one hit, and you only get three lives. But it's mandatory to complete because you need Wakko's shovel that you get for beating it! But luckily, the game does offer some help, like with the collectibles. If you're in an area that still has some left, the counter for how many you've collected will remain on screen, acting like a "radar" of sorts. But it's still up to you to find out where exactly they are and how to get them.
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There's also some "warp doors" you can find in the levels, up to three per area, to warp to different places within the level without having to backtrack, as well as changing doors(With a star on them) that act as checkpoints if you die. You also can use the changing doors to switch between the Warner siblings once you rescue them, as opposed to the previous games when it was mapped to a button. Like in the Genesis version, the Warners all have shared health, but if you end up getting a health upgrade, if you die, you don't even start back with full health! You just start at three filled apples, but thankfully health power-ups are way more generous here this time. And ONCE AGAIN, there's only five huge levels here, if you don't count the movie lot hub level, the Pinky and the Brain minigames and the final boss fight with Deville. What is it with this series and not having many levels to explore? I understand some of the episodes were based in real-world areas and times, but there were still some imaginative and unique places in the show, you can still work around with those, right? That and there were still imaginative characters to work with too.
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Overall, it's definitely worth a look if you're a fan of the show and you wanna relive at least a little bit of its 90s magic and nostalgia, and I personally think it's one of the best games in the A! series outside of the retro ones. It's decent despite its difficulty and it feels more improved and genuine, but its most potent error here is that it could've had even more. If you have the permission to use the license for Animaniacs, then use it to its potential instead of skimping out with generic and forgettable side characters and a cruddy remixed theme song and more! There's plenty of incomplete walkthroughs for it on Youtube cause people have gotten stuck on it or quit, but fortunately chimanruler15 on YouTube finally completed it beginning to end and uploaded his playthrough between August to September 2015.
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But it fares better than the last modern game on our list. Warthog Sweden was a part of making this game as well, and they, along with the exact same publisher, went on to make this one a year after "The Great Edgar Hunt", after seeing the potential and success it had.

(Next: Animaniacs: Lights, Camera, Action on the GBA/DS)