The Adventures of Willy Beamish

Game developer: Dynamix
Game publisher: Sierra On-Line, Activision
Game release date: 1991 year
Game status: Released

Willy Beamish is the third and last adventure made by Jeff Tunnel for Dynamix and it takes a different approach from the other two. Rise of the dragon and heart of China were both played from a first person view but Willy Beamish takes the more conventional approach where you can walk around with your character. The story centers around Willy, a young boy who deams of going to the Nintari game championships but to do that he will have to be a good boy and not get into trouble or else his parents won't let him go.

Willy Beamish travels around with his pet frog called horny and occasionally this gets him into trouble, as you look at the intro you see his frog jumping on the school principal while he is giving a speech before the end of the season. This of course gets Willy a one way ticket to after school detention and this is where the games starts. The first thing you have to do is get out of school so you can get home and start your summer vacation and of course to practice your gaming skills. Things are done in a standard point and click interface which should be pretty obvious for anyone who's played adventure games before. It's not all fun and games though because Willy will have to keep his parents in a good mood by not getting into much trouble and also doing chores occasionally. This is represented by a naughty meter and if you do something good or bad it will change, if it gets too bad they will not allow you compete in the competition and it's a wasted summer. Things you should do are walking the dog, washing the car and showing up for dinner at the right time. Things you shouldn't do include not picking on your little sister and staying out too long and not listening to your parents. Along the way to the Nintari championship you'll encounter many strange thing like the ghost of your grandfather and have to do neat stuff like winning a frog hopping competition.

This game is once again a great adventure game from Jeff Tunnel and it's a shame he didn't make any more of them. Even though it's a lot less serious than his other two adventure it has plenty to offer and adventure game fan. The graphics are scanned in from hand drawn graphics and it gives the game a real cartoonish look to them and it suits the game very well. It does have some minor problems like some pixel hunting and some obscure puzzles but those are pretty much present in every adventure game. There are however some timed puzzles as well which are very annoying and on the DOS version this can lead to an unsaleable puzzle becaue the timer (which you can't see) runs faster than you can walk so use a slowdown until or something like that. Other than that though this a highly recommended game so get it now.

Game genre: Adventures, Funny Games, Logic Games, Puzzles
Platform/System: MS-DOS Games, Amiga Games, Mac Games, Sega Mega Drive Games