| Wild Woody | |
|---|---|
Cover art |
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| Developer(s) | Sega of America |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Platform(s) | Sega CD |
| Release date(s) | 1995 |
| Genre(s) | Platform game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) |
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| Media/distribution | CD-ROM |
Wild Woody is a game released by Sega of America for the Sega CD in 1995, just before the discontinuance of the system. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board gave the title a "Kids To Adults" rating. Upon its initial release, the game quickly went into the bargain bins. But because of its understated dialogue, tasteful soundtrack, and life-like animated cut scenes, it has since become a cult hit with Sega CD collectors.
A famous treasure hunter enters his office, sets down a magic six-headed totem pole, then leaves. On his desk, in the middle of the darkened office, the enchanted totem pole springs to life! Five of the heads split off and enter into graphical media spread about the room: paintings, blue prints, magazines lodged in trash cans, etc. The remaining totem head—alone, bereft of his brethren—is both angry and fearful, feeling much like Cain after he slew Abel.
The five rampant heads rule fantasy worlds that correlate with the objects they inhabit: for instance, one head, after jumping into a painting of Mt. Olympus, presides over a world made up of bric-brac from Greek mythology. Although these totem heads have few powers in the real world, apparently it, too, is in some kind of peril. In order to save the world, the bottom totem head needs to find a hero. He looks around the room and sees a yellow number 2 pencil. The totem head imbues the pencil with life, much like how God gave life to Adam. This wooden pencil, after spinning around and drawing some wild sketches, informs the totem head that "[t]he name's Woody... WIIILD Woody!" The totem asks if Woody is up to the challenge of saving the world, to which Woody responds, "My good man, as of fifteen seconds ago, I was BOOORN to save the world!" Woody ventures out on an epic quest filled with pirates and vacuum cleaners.
As Wild Woody, the anthropomorphic pencil, you must venture through various side-scrolling action-adventure platforming-levels in order to dislodge the totem heads from their fantasy realms and stack them on top of each other, thereby saving the world. You extinguish your enemies by means of your eraser, located on the bottom of your body. Woody can also draws things, and, as the good totem states, "Everything [he] draw[s] will become real!" Woody can, for instance, draw airplanes on pieces of paper, which, with a puff of smoke, transform into paper airplanes that sail through the air briefly before plummeting to Earth, much like Icarus on his waxen wings. The purpose of this ability is unclear.
There is a rare "director's cut" of the game, though very few copies exist. The following is a quote from one of the developers of this now-legendary game:
"There is a special version of this game, given out only the people who worked on the game. It only has a couple of differences, though. The published version was sent off while we were getting the last couple of bugs out. The only noticeable differences is a tiny island at the bottom left corner of Pirate Act 1 (which fixed a bug where Woody could get caught underwater at the edge of the world), and the addition of a health and give-me-a-sketch buttons to the debug controller."