Everyone's A Wally

Everyone's a Wally is a British video game released in 1985 by Mikro-Gen for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64. The sequel to Pyjamarama, it features the same hero character, Wally Week, and uses an upgraded version of the same game engine.

Everyone's A Wally
Developer(s)Chris Hinsley
Publisher(s)Mikro-Gen
Platform(s)ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64
Release1985
Genre(s)Adventure
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

Everyone's a Wally was the first arcade adventure game to feature multiple playable characters - a revolutionary feature at the time. Players began in control of Wally (a builder and handyman), but could switch to Wilma (his wife), and their friends Tom (a punk plumber), Dick (a dodgy bricklayer) and Harry (a hippie electrician) - these last three names drawn from the placeholder phrase Tom, Dick and Harry. Herbert (their baby son) also appeared in the game as a mobile hazard NPC. The player cannot freely change character; the player begins in control of Wally and in order to switch must be on the same screen as the desired character. Those not being controlled by the player wander randomly around the map controlled by extremely simple AI - another feature that at the time had never been seen before. Lives and health (called "endurance") were tracked independently for each character, but the game ended if any character died.

The aim of the game is to complete a day's worth of work for each character; each character has a job to do stereotypical of their skill - for instance, Wally has to build a wall, Wilma has to take back three books to the library, etc. Completing the job awards the character with a letter, which spells out a password to open a safe holding everyone's wages. The eventual password is "BREAK" - knowing this does not spoil the game since most of the letters can be seen before jobs are complete; the game requires them to be actually collected before allowing the safe to open.

Development

Everyone's a Wally started out as Life of Wally and was written by Chris Hinsley in 1985 - although in an interview with Crash, Paul Denial stated that the entire Mikro-Gen team had input into both character design and coding.[1]

The game (as Life) was given an advance mention in Pyjamarama, released the year before.

Song

The original tape cassette version of Everyone's a Wally featured a Mike Berry song about the game recorded as an audio track on the B side.[2]

References
  1. Crash, issue 13, pages 36-38
  2. http://www.crashonline.org.uk/14/wally.htm
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