Animaniacs Game Pack Review by: 1sam234 - 7.7/10
Game Pack offers many time killers and one rather big and standout game that makes it worth itNow for our main PC attraction, "Animaniacs: Game Pack" for the PC. Made in 1997 by Funnybone Productions, It's a collection of games rather than just one game. You get to hear a redone intro and explaining of the game, like the Genesis version but with their original voices as well, so that's pretty cool and it's done well too. After that, you get to the main menu.
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There's 5 games to choose from in the menu in five different objects. First up is Prop Shop Drop. The cutscenes are actually well done and decently animated for the most part, you could tell they tried to make it flowing with the writing and animation.
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The game begins and you control Yakko Warner riding the bike, collecting movie props. The goal is to collect as many as you can and get to the end without dying. There doesn't seem to be a minimum requirement of props to collect nor a time limit to beat the level, you just get bonuses on how fast you complete it. It's a top-down driving game and seems simple enough to control: Spacebar jumps and the arrow keys move you around. Hitting anything that doesn't have a glow around it takes away from your damage/health meter, to which you can only take five hits before gaming over. That's right, you have no lives here at all, you have to go through the game in one clean sweep. The music does sound a bit nice for MIDI though.
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Each level throws more and more obstacles your way, sometimes the enemies move around, sometimes they toss projectiles at you from snowballs to full blown, giant fireballs, and some of them can hone in on you. The game thinks that challenge equals pack everything into the screen at once. By the later levels, you're pretty much jumping 24-7! The good news is that you can restore your health by collecting other vehicles, which can improve your speed too. Lose all your damage in another vehicle, then you go back to your bike, and if you take another hit past that then that's it, you're done. The controls are responsive for the most part, but you move and turn so slow sometimes, especially with the bike. It's tough to avoid everything, you're gonna end up taking damage eventually. I think there's only 10 levels here, but beating them all would take mass concentration.
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The next game is Baloney's Balloon Bop. It's a more fun based game, with the Warners trying to survive against Baloney the ditsy dino.
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It's pretty much a Breakout clone, with Yakko as the ball and popping the balloons while Wakko and Dot hold the trampoline below for him, and Baloney is below them. The goal here is to pop all the balloons, then go on to the next level to do the same there and so on. The controls are once again a bit slow to respond, so that seems to be a theme here. The balloons give points and power ups sometimes, and the big blue balloons drop anvils that stun Baloney when they hit him. Baloney keeps moving under you as you move, but Yakko can bounce back up from the bottom of the screen if Baloney doesn't catch him, you only lose a life if he catches you.
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The music sounds really, really weird in this game though. Like a mix of 8-bit and 16-bit meshing together, in a bad way. Another theme I'm noticing is that animations also look rather cheap and stiff in-game, there's barely any frames in anyone outside of the cutscenes. Not a whole lot more to say, the balloons switch places and there are more powerups to get later on, along with unbreakable steel blocks, but that's it. If you like Breakout, you'll sort of like this.
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Next up, a little game called "Smoocher". You play as Dot in her dreams, a la "Barbie" on NES, and your goal is to literally smooch your enemies into submission. You have a limited amount of smooches, but there's always plenty to collect as hearts, as long as you can keep away from the enemies. The gameplay is a bit more involved this time, it plays like Mario Bros. in a way. The graphics feel improved a bit too and they added in more varied voices and enemies with different ways to take them down. One of which is a TNT block, like a Mario Bros. "POW" block that stuns everyone on screen, then you just have to touch them once to defeat them. This is also the game where a lot of the Animaniacs characters make their cameos, such as Slappy Squirrel, Ralph, the Goodfeathers, Hello Nurse, Dr. Scratchansniff and the Mime.
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You start with two lives, and if you get hit once, you lose a life. You have a certain amount of enemies to take down too, and a limited amount of smooches before you have to get more. You can get more lives later on too, as long as you can keep moving. Some enemies can take more than one smooch to stun, some need to be attacked from behind, some can block them entirely, some disregard the platforms, and more. So the variety is there, and can get difficult fast as the levels go on.
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After Level 8 though, and when it gets to "Anything Goes!", it all rather feels the same by that point. There's no new gimmicks and enemies, and even the backgrounds and layouts repeat as you get further, so it's basically just for the score by then. So if you like Mario Bros., then you'll like this.
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Next is... Golf. That's it, just golf. "Tee Off Mini Golf" to be exact. You play as Dot again, and it's the easiest minigolf game ever. It's 9 holes of straight lines, with the occasional obstacle and cameo by Buttons and Mindy. Other than hills and other creatures crawling on the green, that's all there is in terms of difficulty. There's a few easter eggs like when you mess up the shots on Hole 1 on purpose, along with transitions when you get to turns, but there's not much else to say. Like I said, it's just minigolf.
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Last game, and apparently the main one, "Belchinator Too". They had to get Pinky and the Brain in there somehow, right? In another plan to take over the world gone haywire, Brain's creations turn against him and imprison him deep in Acme Labs, wanting to use his intellect to destroy the world instead of take it over. This is the only game where you play as Wakko by himself, going through various levels of Acme Labs to get to the final boss, the "Think Tank". His main attack is burping, and you can get upgrades to temporarily boost its power and range, make it spread, explode on contact with an enemy, etc. You have an easy-to-follow health system that you can restore with hearts again, and the enemies are varied and look nice and behave like they should. Not only that, but there's a dedicated map button too, to see where you are and where to go to find the exit, etc., so you're not fumbling around aimlessly. The music's still weird, but the graphics look the best this game can allow, even though the animation when things move around is still stiff. Again, not too many frames.
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It's a top down adventure game this time with 7 levels, but it's definitely the biggest game in the Pack. The controls are actually good and responsive, there's lots of power ups for weapons and armor, it's easy yet can get comfortably challenging, and it's simple enough to follow through to the end. It's actually one of the better games in the Pack, and to be honest, a halfway decent Animaniacs game in general. It's actually enjoyable, funny, and easy to play without having to look up 80 different things to what the stuff there does.
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There are still some flaws though. Sometimes the enemies can bunch up on you, giving you almost no room to breathe, attack or flee, but thankfully, you have a decent invincibility period if you're hit. The voice samples, while genuine and nice to hear, can get a little grating though when you have to hear the same quote over and over again when you pick up something. The layout is also a little absurd too, there's lots of things that are placed at random, from keys from enemies to enemy spawn points to obstacles that are just placed there to annoy you and block your path. While some of the games go a bit too slow here, this one's the opposite, sometimes it goes way too fast! But luckily, you can adjust the game speed to make it more slow and manageable.
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The final boss is painfully easy though, even though it can take a while and can spawn backup. Just equip a wide range burp weapon and you got it in the bag if you can keep it locked in place and destroy the backup it spawns, otherwise the tank itself will beat you in around three hits unarmored, and the backup robots can hone in on you fast and eat away your armor. And you have no lives too, how nice. And the ending is pretty funny and satisfying to watch too.
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In conclusion, this game alone could carry itself if it was made into a standalone game. If the animation and graphics were improved, the controls tightened, and a few tweaks were made, it could be a very nice game by itself, or heck, even an online Flash game. The other games are passable and are enjoyable time killers at most, but for the minigolf game, you're better off playing Golf on NES or anywhere else.
A good majority of them here are definitely enjoyable, and the Animaniacs game series itself did really well except for the very end. I honestly wish that they'd make new games for them again at least, but I guess time'll tell if that'll ever happen. If we only have these, I'm not
totally complaining, but try them out and see for yourself if they hold up to your own standards.
Bonus review up next: Pinky and the Brain: The Master Plan
Graphics
8 Sound
4 Addictive
8 Depth
7 Story
8 Difficulty
6
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