The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a point-and-click graphic adventure game developed by Dynamix, and it was published by Sierra On-Line in 1991 for MS-DOS. The game pioneered the use of in-game graphics drawn to resemble classic hand-drawn cartoon animation. The CD-ROM for DOS, the Commodore Amiga, and Macintosh were released in 1992 and was ported to the Sega CD in 1993 by Infinite Laser Dog. CD versions of the game complemented the in-game text with speech, and included a few other cosmetic changes.
Plot[]
- Can you say "seriously deep doo doo" boys and girls?
- TORMENT
- Your tag-along little sister−Just how hard would you have to push to get her wing to do a loop.
- AGGRAVATE
- Anchient Ms. Glass, the English teacher−Hey kiddies, can you spell "cardiac arrest?"
- CHARM
- Good 'ol mom and dad−dump 'em fast, dump 'em now, look cute and blame everything on your sister.
- Welcome to the seriously warped world of Willy Beamish. You'll face neurotic yuppie parents, teachers on the edge, a ghostly grandfather bacl from the grave, the baby-sitter from hell, and a plot to blow the city's sewer system sky high. It's chaostic, it's juvenile, it's definately deranged and you're gonna love every minute of it!
- FEATURING
- A majorly mental cast of characters (that really talk).
- Excellent animation from some of the world's greatest animators. Looks like Saturday morning cartoons!
- Truly wicked puzzles and an outrageous original sound track!
Gameplay[]
The player takes on the role of nine-year-old Willy Beamish in a game that somewhat parodies the adventure genre. Many of the challenges that Willy faces are typical choices that a nine-year-old boy must make: whether to push his little sister on the swingset (and how high to push her), whether to wash his dad's car, and whether to take his dog for a walk. Making unwise choices can produce negative consequences of various sorts. For instance, if Willy does not wash his father's car, he does not receive his allowance, and cannot buy an item that he will need later in the game. In addition, Willy has a score system called the Trouble-O-meter, a thermometer with "Good Boy" at the bottom and "Cadet School" at the top. Actions that annoy Willy's parents will cause the meter to go up one level, and really infuriating them will cause it to go up more. If the mercury reaches "Cadet School", that's where Willy goes, and the game is over.
Development[]
Wanting to create an interactive Saturday morning cartoon on a computer, the concept for The Adventures of Willy Beamish started by Jeffrey Tunnell in 1990. He teamed up with Brian Hahn and Sheri Wheeler (a Disney and Filmation artist) to come up with the character design for Willy Beamish, which included input from the designers, writers, and animators.[1] To allow the main character to show and move on screen, the Dynamix Game Development System had to be slightly modified.
Using the same detailed process of storyboarding from both Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China, every scene and backdrop were drawn with pencils before they were painted and scanned onto the computer using a color scanner.[2] Animated cels were created by hand in black and white, scanned into the computer, and then colored using a paint program. Finally, animators had to put together the cels into animated sequences before they too were added on top of the backgrounds. To help out with the storyline, Tony Perutz (who worked at NBC) and Meryl Perutz (who worked at Family Home Entertainment and DIC) were brought in to work on the dialog, puzzles and character backgrounds.[3]
Sometime after the original release of The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Scott Wallin was assigned to direct the CD versions of the game for both MS-DOS and Sega CD. Sher Alltucker handle the voice casting, with Michael Zibelman taking on the role of Willy Beamish.
A sequel, Willy Beamish 2, was reportedly planned to have Willy as a late teenager, but the project was canceled.
Sega CD[]
The Sega CD edition of the game was noted for having slow loading times and slightly washed out colors, due to the hardware limitations of the system. In an effort to make up for the slow loading time, the game has a feature where the player can select the "Start" button and manipulate a set of twirling black and white balls, known in the manual as "Laser Balls". A glitch in some editions of the game caused the game to freeze up during certain scenes.
That edition also features a minigame on Willy's Nintari system in his bedroom (in the PC version, playing the Nintari just plays a cutscene of a video game). The minigame, known as Super Space K'Noidtrix, combines elements of Space Invaders, Tetris and Arkanoid.
Credits[]
Reception[]
GameFan Magazine reviewed the Sega CD port of Willy Beamish on April 1993 and gave it an 85%. The magazine wrote, "This interactive adventure game has crisp graphics, voice, animation and lots of player interaction. Willy Beamish is also long, but at the same time limited. It's a fun game to play and if you practice you'll see all the different endings."[4]
References[]
- ↑ The Adventures of Willy Beamish Hintbook, pp. 4-7
- ↑ The Adventures of Willy Beamish Hintbook, pp. 8-9
- ↑ The Adventures of Willy Beamish Hintbook, pp. 10-12
- ↑ Gamefan, Volume 1, Issue #05, p. 15 (April 1993)
External links[]
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