Title:

  • The Adventures of Willy Beamish

Genre:

  • Graphic Adventure

Developer:

  • Dynamix

Publisher:

  • Sierra On-Line

Release Date:

  • 1991

System(s):

  • DOS, Mac, Amiga, Sega CD

Box Art Credit:

  • Wikipedia

Systems Used:

  • Mac running Boxer (DOSBox based)

Stupid Plot:

  • Yes

On Wikipedia:

The Adventures of Willy Beamish looked okay from the start. Slick animation (well, it's DOS, but very well done for the time), an adventure game with inventory and dialogues, charmingly dated sequences, it seemed like a go, and it was one of the first games I played on DOSBox (actually, I started with the Mac port). Despite being developed by the semi-independent Dynamix, Willy Beamish holds proud and true to the Sierra tradition of unforeseeable deaths and the fact that doing one wrong thing in the beginning (or NOT doing the right thing in the beginning) can completely screw you over for the rest of the game, which this game does in abundance. Actually, know what? There's really not a lot of things I can really say about this game that isn't repeated in the HardcoreGaming101 review, which I agree on most parts of it, except on the non-humor of the "bad endings" that can happen to Willy. With the style of humor found in the rest of the game, the negative endings don't seem that off-color though they do get frustrating (I can't tell you how many times I died at the hands of the thugs, for instance).

Paring carrots to avoid being sent to military school!

So was it any good? Well, beyond the highly frustrating structure (which can be mitigated with a walkthrough, mostly) and a little help in the writing department, I'd say it DID have some good in it. However, I'm not going to play it any time soon again (even though I probably played it as earlier as fall 2010 but no later than summer 2012, the earlier year more likely), and I really would not recommend it to anyone (unless you wanted to watch a longplay on YouTube, where you can get all the catchy music without the frustration, though the VA is obnoxious). How's that for a non-recommended review?

Screengrab Credit: Planete-Adventure

March 22 2015

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