Wally Week series

[spider]

Not sure if this should be in games or here, please move if appropriate.

With the MikroGen Wally Week series, we have:

Automania (even though its not really the same format)
Pyjamarama
Herberts Dummy Run
Everyone's A Wally
Three Weeks In Paradise

I'm curious here, I wonder if there were any more games planned for this series, even if it was a passing comment in an interview at some point ?

I do realise 3WIP was out around the 128K machine time, as I'd brought the 48K version ( ! ) not realising that there was a separate 128K one (I had a grey +2 at that point!) , but to be fair it only had different title music, displayed the loader scr again and a few more rooms and objects.

[MarkRJones1970]

AFAIK there was never any other Wally Week games planned or mentioned in any of the magazines at the time.

[spider]

AFAIK there was never any other Wally Week games planned or mentioned in any of the magazines at the time.

Thanks Mark.

I was expecting to hear that, but you never know something may of been vaguely hinted in an interview or suchlike.

The only extra bit of info I did read was the MikroPlus was meant to be used with Three Weeks as well, likely like Unicorn, another complete interface to go along with the tape.

[MarkRJones1970]

Battle of the Planets was originally planned to be Mikro Plus game too.

[mausthekat]

Chris Smith was working on the next game in the Wally series for MikroGen in 85/86, but it never got finished. He mentioned it on the WoS forums.

[toot_toot]

I think one of the issues might have been that the Wally style of gameplay had been mimicked by a few budget titles by the time a sequel to Three Weeks in Paradise would have been in development. Games like The Incredible Shrinking Fireman and even maybe Spellbound/Knight Tyme had a very similar gameplay style - walking around various rooms, picking up objects and trying to solve (sometimes obscure!) problems while dodging random objects flying around!

I think it would have been really hard to justify a similar game to Three Weeks in Paradise as a full price game after those budget titles were released. Maybe they could have done something different.

You might have also had the issue of the games being developed by different people, Chris Hinsley worked on Automania, Pyjamarama and Everyone’s a Wally, but David Perry worked on Herbert’s Dummy Run and Three Weeks in Paradise.

[spider]

Chris Smith was working on the next game in the Wally series for MikroGen in 85/86, but it never got finished. He mentioned it on the WoS forums.

Thanks. That's interesting to know. I could not from a cursory search find it but I'll look again when I have a moment free. It would be nice to know what was actually done towards it, even if it does not exist anymore.

I think one of the issues might have been that the Wally style of gameplay had been mimicked by a few budget titles by the time a sequel to Three Weeks in Paradise would have been in development. Games like The Incredible Shrinking Fireman and even maybe Spellbound/Knight Tyme had a very similar gameplay style - walking around various rooms, picking up objects and trying to solve (sometimes obscure!) problems while dodging random objects flying around!

I think it would have been really hard to justify a similar game to Three Weeks in Paradise as a full price game after those budget titles were released. Maybe they could have done something different.

You might have also had the issue of the games being developed by different people, Chris Hinsley worked on Automania, Pyjamarama and Everyone’s a Wally, but David Perry worked on Herbert’s Dummy Run and Three Weeks in Paradise.

I know what you mean, exactly.

I did post a topic about this ages ago either here or WOS, but the only 'exact' clone really I could find as the other games use menus or keys was "Happiest Days Of Your Life" as that has left/right/jump and you switch objects by walking over them automatically.

[mausthekat]

Here's the WoS comment I was referring to:

https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/disc ... ent_261793


I also have this from when he was asked for more details at around that time.

A quick overview:
Wally is asleep, and his conscience is out and about around the house. You can control either the 'bad wally' or 'good wally'. The good wally goes around fixing things/cleaning up after the bad wally, or the bad wally goes around breaking/messing things up for the good wally.

The idea came from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon that I saw one evening after "a day at the office".

Some of the graphics were done (wally asleep in the chair, the 'devil' wally and the 'angel' wally) - plus there were lots of graphics we could re-use. We wanted to remove as much attribute clash as possible though, so a lot of the graphics would need to be changed to fit the attribute squares almost exactly.

It had all the makings of a really really good wally game, bringing in something new (ok, a little like Everyones A Wally, but the gameplay was based on a different strategy).

As for the name,
"Between the devil and the deep blue sea" was played with for a bit, but was a bit long. I did often just refer to it as "the wally game" with people who needed to know what I was talking about.

I've also got "Hyde and Seek" scribbled on a piece of paper from around that time, I vaguely remember coming up with it, but I don't recall whether it was thought of as a good name at the time.

✓ Reviewed

[toot_toot]

[
I know what you mean, exactly.

I did post a topic about this ages ago either here or WOS, but the only 'exact' clone really I could find as the other games use menus or keys was "Happiest Days Of Your Life" as that has left/right/jump and you switch objects by walking over them automatically.

I’d forgotten about Happiest Days of Your Life, even though I own it! With a bit of polish, it could have been a Wally Week game (maybe Herbert had grown up?). Another very similar game is Sceptre of Baghdad, but again it was another budget game. Searching for the same genre after 1985, the Wally Week style games all seemed to be budget releases except Dr What! Which to be fair, probably should have been budget!

I also noticed that the guys who programmed Happiest Days and Sceptre of Baghdad wrote no other games, I wonder if they maybe sent them to Mikro Gen for consideration as a Wally Week game, both with a bit of sprite editing could easily be in the series.

[druellan]

Here's the WoS comment I was referring to:

I'm willing to add this to the database as an unpublished Wally game. I think there is enough information for a name, some aliases and a nice trivia about the game.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

That last Wally game seemed a very good idea, Wally vs Wally, a pity it was never released.

[druellan]

That last Wally game seemed a very good idea, Wally vs Wally, a pity it was never released.

Yeah! and if I understand it correctly, you can play as the "good" Wally or the "evil" Wally, that's pretty unique.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

'Head Over Heels' featuring Wally

[spider]

Chris Smith was working on the next game in the Wally series for MikroGen in 85/86, but it never got finished. He mentioned it on the WoS forums.

Off topic: I could not reply to your PM (disabled) but I did post on the jswmm forum with your question about jsw, sorry but no other means of reply!

Back on topic:

I'd agree it may be worth a trivia entry of some kind as there's "evidence" as such from the programmer.

Unfortunately things like the Sweevo+Hydrofool sequel (lets not even go near MireMare) there's not really anything concrete from the developers as such only vapour rumours.

[mausthekat]

Off topic: I could not reply to your PM (disabled) but I did post on the jswmm forum with your question about jsw, sorry but no other means of reply!

Thanks! From the video the game looked great, but I can't find anything else about it online - only an upcoming Steam game by (presumably) the same guy that looks similar but nowhere near as good.

https://store.steampowered.com/search/? ... el%20Stonk

(There is a demo available.)

[dvduk]

Battle of the Planets was originally planned to be Mikro Plus game too.

I'd always suspected that this, and 3 Weeks, was intended for the interface.
At least the 3 Weeks work probably appeared in the 128 version.