ACME Animation Factory

The Game

Not much I can say about this really, but I had to include it. It's not really a game, it's Mario Paint with a Looney Tunes license. It's mostly there for young creative kids to create their own Looney Tunes animations and colour in pictures. There's the odd mini game, similar to Mario Paint, but nothing to really write home about.

It was developed by Probe Software who were notable for a lot of arcade conversions for other home computer systems in the 80s, they dealt with console conversions of Outrun and Mortal Kombat II to several home consoles. They were eventually bought out by Acclaim in 1995 before going bankrupt in 2004. The name was resurrected in 2025 with attempts to buy Acclaim IPs, but nothing has come of it yet.

Published by Sun Corporation of America, the American branch of Japan's Sun Corporation, also known as Sunsoft. They developed and published loads of popular games like Aero the Acrobat 1 & 2 for the SNES, Blaster Master for the NES, Batman: The Video Game, the SNES release of Lemmings, and some home console releases of Myst.

Gameplay

Like I said, there isn't much to be said, there are some pre-set animations that can be set on different backgrounds to create Looney Tunes scenes, some blank pictures that can be coloured in, your own music creator/editor, and a couple of mini games, a Solitaire, and a Mix and Match card game where you have to find pairs of cards. This really was designed for artistic children who dreamed of becoming an animator.

Graphics

Admittedly, the graphics are very nice, but you'd expect that from software focused primarily on graphics! The sprites are big, clear and well drawn, the animation is nice, and the UI for the painting and animation is clear and well presented, although the choice of colour wasn't my favourite, an orangey wood-effect background was a bit garish, but that was the style of the time I suppose!

Sound and Music

No complaints here, it's your typical Looney Tunes jaunty music, the Looney Tunes opening theme is there, and everything else along with it, and whatever monstrosities you can create in the music creator.

The People

There are some interesting things to find about the people behind the game at least, one of the game's designers, Greg Michael, leaned more into programming after this and worked on Mortal Kombat II, Alien Trilogy (my favourite shooter on the PS1), Forsaken, and Crackdown 3 to name a few, but he worked double duty on this game and was Producer as well as design.

The game's second producer was a real Jack-of-all-trades working production, design, graphics, QA, and marketing across 46 games, but dropped off the radar in 2006.

The music was worked on by Steve Collett who is still very active to this day working on games like Pagemaster, X-Men Mutant Academy, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and most recently, Powerwash Simulator 2.

Box art

I love the art on this box, it's pure Looney Tunes and would definitely catch my eye in a video store, it's a shame the content wouldn't have interested me at all, but the box certainly would've done. The cut off Daffy Duck head on to Bugs Bunny's body, and vice versa, is a great touch and sells the software perfectly.

As for the back, again some beautiful screenshots and Looney Tunes art, and my favourite, bullet points!

• Create and save cartoons to watch any time - you can do this, in its most basic form, but you can do it.
• Choose from a full menu of Looney Tunes scenes and characters, or draw your own! - Yup, another accurate statement.
• Colour your creation any way you want, then add titles and create music - We're 3 for 3 here and I think we could be on for our second clean sweep.
• Use your control pad or the Nintendo mouse to make it even easier! - I couldn't test this, but I double checked to be sure and it definitely is fully Nintendo mouse compatible, so well done ACME Animation Factory, you're the second clean sweep of the series.

Unsurprisingly I give this box a rating of - Accurate. Ignoring the fact the content wasn't for me at all, it made no promises it couldn't keep and I have to give it props for that.

The Press

GamePro:

With the point-and-click icons, the easy controls let you do everything efficiently. This game might inspire a whole new generation of animators.

4/5

Electronic Games:

Acme Animation Factory is fun and, for a mildly complex creative product, fairly user friendly - the learning curve should not be high for its target audience. But it's not that much of a step beyond Mario Paint, so selecting it will be largely a personal choice for some.

75/100