The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a classic point and click game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. From the game box, advertisements and splash screen you might think that skateboarding figures heavily in the storyline. I’ve scrubbed through hours of gameplay and I only found a few sequences. The frog is more important to the storyline, but that didn’t stop me from wasting a good chunk of time on this post. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve made a vintage video game post.
Sierra was sold and absorbed several times, more or less ceasing to exist around 2009, although the name has been resurrected. The original founder of the 1979 company maintains a web site dedicated to preserving the history at SierraGamers.com. You can even play it online at Best of Games. Some of my screen captures are from that site. I tried playing it to find more skateboarding sequences but it locked up on me after about 5 minutes.
Most of the box images you see here came from Launch Box. Originally a DOS based game released on series of floppy disks, it eventually mage its way to other platforms like Amiga, Macintosh, and Sega CD.
Below is an 1993 advertisement for The Adventures of Willy Beamish, as well as the original artwork by Greg Winters that sold at auction in 2023.
And now it’s time for a buttload of screen caps… First, it’s the opening sequence of the game.
Next up is a bunch of random caps from the game. This cutaway sequence appears in the video The History of The Adventures of Willy Beamish by Rewind Arcade. Willy almost gets hit by a car twice, and cause one car to get a flat tire. He also Ollies into a wall ride, and there can be no doubt because he leaves scorched wheel marks on the fence. I don’t know if there’s much more skateboarding in this. I scrubbed through 2 game play videos with about 7 hours (!) of total footage and I didn’t see much else.
I did find a couple more. In this sequence Willy is doing a sort of reverse Bart Simpson. Instead of skateboard out the front door and ollieing down the store sets, he Ollies up the stairs and burst through the front door. The crude animation on this makes it look likes riding a hoverboard instead of a skateboard.
Here are two more random some screen caps with skateboarding from Adventure Gamers and TheGamesDB with two different aspect ratios and quality levels. With each release on a more advanced platform the graphics quality increased, animations were added, and ultimately voiceovers were added. More details about the game and it’s history are available a the Dynamix Fandom wiki.
That’s all folks! If your’e hungry for more, enjoy the History of the The Adventures of Willy Beamish.
Here’s a playthrough on the DOS version. Animations are minimal and there is no voiceover.
And finally, a playthrough on what you have to assume is the pinnacle of Willy Beamish, Sega CD.
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