The Electric Otaku: 2010

Genre:	Adventure
Year:	1991
Rated:	PG
Platform:	Sega CD / PC

My Opinion:

The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a 'point-and-click' style adventure game. A 'point-and-click' game is one where, instead of you directly controlling the character, you click on a doorway or an object in order to trigger an event. I don't see too many of these type of games any more, I wish they would make a comeback.

Your goal is to play out the antics and adventures of 9-year old Willy, his family, and the citizens of Frumpton, and to help him get to the Nintarti Championship and avoid ending up in Military School. Your progress is dependent on the decisions you make and the actions you take. Although this looks pretty much like a kid-oriented game, there are occasional scenes of adult humor and innuendoes, such as his pet frog being named Horny and his school nurse have obviously large breasts. Were this game released today, parents would probably be up-in-arms over this... almost makes you miss the old days don't it?

The entire game is drawn in cel-animation style, reminiscent of childhood cartoons. Although, some of the art is a little on the pixelly side and the colors look faded.

There are two versions of this game, a PC version and Sega CD. I have only played the Sega CD version. The only differences are that the PC version doesn't have voice actors for the game, so the characters speak with text-dialog bubbles; the Sega CD version has some animation as well as a voice actors for the characters. So this review will be about the Sega CD version.

As far as gameplay is concerned, its actually pretty difficult. You really have to listen to the characters (but the poor audio quality and lack of subtitles doesn't help), understand the situations and scenarios, and explore your environment (a lot of key items are hidden or blended into the background). A large part of the game is trial-and-error and you can easily get stuck if you don't know where to go or what to do next, and you'll really have to think outside the box for some of the real tight situations. That's why the save button becomes your best friend, along with a walkthrough.

Another drawback is it's often slow load times, but they try to compensate by having a 'laser-ball' feature (press start and you can play around with a string of floating balls). Also there's a mini-game on Willy's Nintari, a shooter/Tetris game.

Overall, if you have patience, I recommend you try out The Adventures of Willy Beamish.

If they ever remade this game, it would be perfect for the Wii, using the Wiimote to point and click would be so much easier than your generally-restricted d-pad.

Do you think this game should be remade? Why or why not? Leave a comment below!

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