The Adventures of Willy Beamish

aka: Les Aventures de Willy Beamish, The Adventures of Willy Beamish: What if you were nine again... knowing what you know now?
Moby ID: 1916
DOS Specs

Description official descriptions

Willy Beamish is a kid who likes to goof off and have fun. Naturally, all the grown-ups get in the way by making him go to school, making him clean his room, etc. But now that's school's out for the summer, Willy is determined to have a good time and maybe even have his pet frog win the frog jumping contest. However Willy has a habit of getting into trouble, and naturally, that means it will be a challenge to get out of it.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a point-and-click graphical adventure. You play Willy Beamish, an eight-year-old kid who is just trying to get through life without losing his lunch money. But he'll have to deal with parents, teachers, babysitters, and bratty sisters. The player must solve different puzzles to ensure Willy can progress, get out of trouble and generally avoid ending up grounded.

The in-game time progresses even if no action is taken. This means many puzzles have to be solved in a certain time frame or rely on being in the right place at the right time. A special aspect of this game is the bar which shows Willy's relationship with his parents. It gets affected by the way certain situations are resolved, e.g. it increases if Willy refuses to play with his sister, and when it is full they send Willy to a military school and the game is lost.

The GOG release of this game for Windows includes both Floppy and CD versions of the game. The main differences are that the CD version has updated graphics, features animations and animated character portraits instead of static images, enhanced audio, and full voice-acting whereas the Floppy version doesn't feature any voice-acting.

Spellings

  • הרפתקאות ווילי - Hebrew spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

83 People · View all

CD Director
Lead Programmer
Voice Casting
Voice of Willy Bleamish
CD Art Director
Lead CD Artist
Sound Engineers
Lead CD Game Tester
CD Game Tester
Technical Support
Manual Layout
Willy
Narrator
Gordon
Sheila
Leona
Tiffany
Dana
Perry
Spider
Brianna
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 69% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 78 ratings with 9 reviews)

You don't want to know what I'll do if I am nine years old again

The Good
Sierra offshoot Dynamix only produced three adventure games. One of them is The Adventures of Willy Beamish, a story of a nine-year-old boy who dreams of participating in the Nintari championships the same summer. He is trying to stay out of trouble with his parents and the rest of his family. So, the last thing he would want is detention on the last day of school and getting a bad report card.

The game is a point-and-click adventure game which lets you dictate what Willy does and when. Jeff Tunnell, along with artist Sheri Wheeler, worked on some design concepts for months until they came up with the final design for Willy. He wanted the game to be more of an interactive cartoon, rather than a traditional adventure. The making of Willy Beamish was the same as in animated films such as Aladdin and The Lion King.

The game is presented in third-person. I enjoyed seeing Willy walk to the other side of the room, pick up objects, and other stuff. It gives the game more of a Sierra feel to it. The interface looks cool. The icons are quite large so that you are not clicking on the wrong object than what you intended. The VCR menu actually has a series of buttons instead of just text options, and the in-game help looks excellent. The background with all the question marks looks marvelous.

I like playing the game using the alternate solutions to some puzzles, and these make the game replayable. One example is at the start of the game, when you are slapped in detention. You can wait until it finishes, or sneak out early using a fake hall pass. You have this thing called the “Trouble Meter” which you only see on the first two days, and you are sent to military school if you let it rise to the top. This gives you a reason to use these alternate solutions. You can choose not to do as you told, as long as the Trouble Meter doesn't go all the way up.

Willy has an inventory, just like any adventure game, complete with large icons and two buttons that let you fast-forward time. Time passes even when you are examining objects in the room. The buttons are useful if you have completed the necessary tasks and need a certain event to happen.

The puzzles in this game are not too hard, and they can be completed in a short amount of time – say five minutes. One of the most memorable for me is on day two, when you are dealing with the babysitter from hell. It is interesting to see how Willy is killed if you fail these puzzles.

The music sounds good, especially when using the Roland MT-32 (which makes the sound more kiddy-like). When you are in the Beamish house, having different music on different days is a nice touch. The sound effects are excellent, matching those used in the old cartoon shows. I have played the CD-ROM version, which has the characters voiced by Dynamix staff. My favorite voice belongs to the narrator. If you look at various objects around the room, you will often get a witty response from him.

Highlight: Examining different objects around the Beamish house and noticing the last sentence, usually about Willy screwing with things he wasn't supposed to. It makes me wish that I did those things when I was nine years old. Also, giving me a false impression that I was about to be drowned in the Humpford mansion after saving the frogs.

The Bad
When you hover over the magnifying glass over certain objects in each room to, its inside is solid gray, which means that you can't look at that object. It seems that the developers were too lazy to add a description for it.

The Bottom Line
The Adventures of Willy Beamish tells the story of a nine-year-old student who plans to spend his summer at the Nintari championships. But to do so, he must be a good little boy and stay out of trouble. You control Willy, and there are different decisions that you can make, both good and bad ones. The game is an interactive cartoon, letting you control your character at all times. This is demonstrated by the cute graphics and the voices in the CD-ROM version. Unlike Dynamix's early games, the game uses a 3rd-person perspective which means that you can see Willy walking across the room and picking up objects. The floppy version is easy to find, but it is rare that copies of CD-ROM version are floating around. So if you are looking for the CD version, then good luck.

DOS · by Katakis | カタキス (43092) · 2014

Don't know why everyone keeps calling this a 'kid's game'...

The Good
I've always had a soft spot for this game. It's really silly, but not goofy, know what I mean? The graphics are nice, the music is nice, and the storyline is very engaging and fun. Finally, a game where you can piss off the principal and act like a complete brat, all from the comfort of your PC! The music got stuck in my head for long after I finished playing this game, and that's saying something since most of the music in games, even games this old, are pretty forgettable. If you're lucky enough to own the talkie version, the voice acting is great...not as great as some of the LucasArts games, but still better than most stuff made today, even.

The Bad
It's too damn hard. I guess it follows in the Sierra adventure game tradition in that death is possible and quite easy to attain. It's way too easy to fail in this game, and some parts are so tricky the only way you'll get through them is to save at every screen. This game is full of the reasons the LucasAdventures were so successful- you couldn't die in them. The save button should be used as a tool, not a part of the gameplay (to paraphrase Ron Gilbert), and this game is simply too difficult to be played without a walkthrough by anyone but the most seasoned adventure gamer.

As if it wasn't enough that some parts are maddeningly hard, but some parts are actually buggy too! That's right....get ready to part with the hair on your scalp as well as some of the things sitting on your desk as you crush them in frustration!

Also, the quality of the voices in the talkie version is quite bad. Thankfully, it's not as bad as the Sega CD version, and you can turn on the regular text to use as subtitles (in fact, the talkie uses that setup by default). Also, in the talkie version, there's only one or two "poses" per character, like in the Sega CD and unlike the floppy disk version. But still, it can be forgiven for the great voices.

The Bottom Line
Don't let the big icons and colorful graphics fool you- this ain't a kid's game. The suggestive frog's name, the school nurse, and the occasional cuss word are also helpful clues to support that theory. If you're not a person who knows every Sierra adventure game inside out and probably most of the LucasArts ones too, find a walkthrough, 'cause you'll sure as hell need it. But once you overcome the frustration, the game is actually really, really fun. There aren't too many accurate simulators of a schoolkid's life (though the upcoming game Bully may fill that void nicely) and it's a great play all the way through. Definitely play it if you can; you can find copies on eBay all the time, and it's also on many abandonware sites. Or even better, get the talkie version; it's damn hard to find, but snap it up if you find it.

DOS · by zoinknoise (80) · 2005

One of the first adventure games to use the "hand-drawn cartoon" look for it's characters.

The Good
Willy Beamishes most impressive feat at the time of it's release was it's hand-drawn, cartoon-styled characters. Gone were Sierra's traditional blurry rotoscoped characters, in their place were characters that looked like they were created by Disney(okay, maybe not Disney, but Don Bluth or Ralph Bakshi).

Combined with a great story and inventive sequences, Will Beamish is fondly remembered as one of the most innovative of Sierra/Dynamix's adventure games.

The Bad
The game was certainly difficult the first time through, with some of the end-game puzzles maddeningly hard(partly due to bugs). But the game was fairly linear, so if you had beat the game once, you could breeze through it a second time in only an hour or two.

The Bottom Line
A worthy edition to any avid adventure gamers collection. Get the CD release for a full-talkie version of the game.

DOS · by Digital Arse (9) · 2000

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled sequel

At one point there were plans for a sequel that would have featured Willy as a teenager.

Version differences

The CD version of The Adventures of Willy Beamish featured full speech while the floppy version did not. The CD version also contains some different cutscenes and different credits part.

The DOS and SEGA CD versions of the game used slightly different color palettes and contained small differences in visual details. In general, the DOS version featured a lighter color palette than did the SEGA CD release of the game. This can be seen in a scene of the school auditorium in the introduction of the game (DOS -- SEGA CD). Notice in the comparison not only that the auditorium seats have completely changed color but that the stage has a different design, such as the inclusion of floor lights in the DOS version, and that the children have appreciably different appearances.

Extras

Some boxes included four removable stickers featuring artwork of "Willy and Horny," "Horny," "Leona," and "Squad Monster" (from the Nintari game). Specially marked game boxes also included a free Willy Beamish LCD watch offer which required that players send in a coupon and the warranty cards. The watch was in-fact analog and depicted Willy Beamish's face in the center of a circle, surrounding the game title, with Horny the frog's webbed-prints representing the hours between 12, 3, 6, and 9.

Manual

The original game had a real wirebound notebook (32 sheets/college ruled, approx. size 8x5in/20.3x12.7cm) in crude childlike writing as its manual. The installation instructions were printed on the back of pinkish A4 sized "Pizzarama!" pizza menu (as visited in the game) complete with main courses, beverages, on the side items, desserts, and prices. The later CD-ROM booklet reproduced the notebook pages as b/w pages within a larger ringbinder, though the pizza menu instructions were excluded.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #10 Most Innovative Computer Game
  • Enchanted Realms
    • January 1992 (issue #9) – Distinctive Adventure Award

Information also contributed by Garcia, John David Karlgren, and Timo Takalo.

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  • MobyGames ID: 1916
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by mclazyj.

Amiga, SEGA CD added by POMAH. Windows added by Cavalary. Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Roger Wilco, Jeanne, LepricahnsGold, Crawly, Zeppin, 6⅞ of Nine, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Narushima.

Game added July 12, 2000. Last modified January 13, 2024.