Leaderboard

As the game begins, Willy Beamish is sent to detention on the last day of school; his pet frog "Horny" disrupted the final school assembly by dislodging the principal's toupee. This initial scene is a good example of the game's array of choices presented to the player: Willy can stay in detention until it is over, but then he won't get home in time to pick up the mail and intercept the report card that shows a "C+" in Music Appreciation. To sneak out early, he must forge a hall pass and avoid the school bully. Many of the challenges that Willy faces are typical choices that a nine-year-old boy must make: whether to push his little sister on the swingset (and how high to push her), whether to wash his dad's car, and whether to go to bed when his parents tell him to. Making unwise choices can cause Willy's parents, who are already near their wit's end with his mischief, to ship him off to military school, which constitutes losing the game. Willy's status in this regard is shown by a score system called Trouble-O-meter, a thermometer with "Good Boy" at the bottom and "Cadet School" at the top. Doing things that will annoy his elders will cause the meter to go up one level, and really infuriating them will cause it to go up more. When it reaches "Cadet School", that's where Willy goes! Later in the game, the threats that Willy faces are more serious, even lethal, in nature. They range from the brutal (having his arms and legs broken by a bully in a pizza parlor) to the ridiculous (being processed into artificial sweetener). In addition, both his frog and his father face mortal perils of their own. If Willy is able to keep everyone out of harm's way and save the town from a sewer system catastrophe, he gains enough money to attend and claim victory in the Nintari championship, which constitutes winning the game. Despite the fact that it features a nine-year-old as the protagonist, much of the game's humour is adult-oriented, including sexual puns (such as a frog called "Horny", and Willy giving a bully an hand held game system and telling him to "play with himself" and a young blonde school nurse with large breasts) and some satire (including a parody of conservative American talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh). A sequel was reportedly planned starring Willy Beamish as a late teenager, but the project was canceled.