A Cancelled, But Nearly Finished Animaniacs Game Has Been Found

An unfinished build of a previously missing Animaniacs game, Hollywood Hypnotics, has been found and saved by the video game preservation group Hidden Palace. Finally, the world can see and even play this lost piece of gaming history.

As spotted recently by Time Extension, a nearly complete version of Animaniacs: Hollywood Hypnotics for the Game Boy Advance was shared with Hidden Palace. This was intended to be a tie-in video game based on the popular animated series that aired on FOX and later The WB from 1993 to 1998. Here’s some footage of the game running:

This newly uncovered build comes courtesy of users MrPinball64 and Billcat-socks. The never-released GBA game was reportedly being developed in the early 2000s by UK-based studio Full Fat Productions. A blog post written by the users who shared the unfinished game claims that development on Hollywood Hypnotics started around 2001 after a previous Animaniacs game had been canceled very early into development. However, the game’s publisher collapsed in 2003, and the nearly finished game was canned.

Hollywood Hypnotics features point-and-click adventure game-like mechanics as well as some 2D platforming. It is a Game Boy Advance game based on a kids’ cartoon. Of course, it has some 2D platforming in it! That was the law back then. The unfinished build is fully playable on modern GBA emulators. I tested it out and it worked perfectly.

The plot of the game revolves around Warner siblings Yakko, Wakko, and Dot trying to stop the famous lab mice Pinky and the Brain from turning the iconic WB Water Tower—where the trio live in the animated series—into a rocket, with the nefarious duo using hypnosis to make their evil plan happen.

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