by Kurt Kalata - last updated 10/1/2010
That was, until Leisure Suit Larry.
Al Lowe
Leisure Suit Larry was born out of an earlier Sierra text-only adventure game called Softporn Adventure. When Ken Williams, president of the company, wanted to do a graphical remake, he put Al Lowe (read interview here) in charge, a programmer who had previously worked on The Black Cauldron, King's Quest III, and other earlier games. Along with Mark Crowe, one of the creators of Space Quest, they came up with Leisure Suit Larry, a fat, balding, perpetually out-of-style loser who just moved out of his basement and wants to experience the womanly touch for the first time in his life. In other words, he may as well be the original 40 Year Old Virgin. His adventures often begin with his famous theme song, which is remarkably catchy even coming from the blippy old PC speaker. Al Lowe, who also wrote the theme, is an accomplished jazz musician, and some of his works also appear in later games.
Through most of the games, the goal is simply - to chat up girls and hopefully convince them to sleep with you, although there's usually some humiliating circumstances that gums up the works. (Some of the games also try to introduce more stringent plots that just happen to have you hooking up with women.) Al Lowe himself has confessed that Larry is sort of a fantasy figure to live the life he never could, the kind that could try to pick up girls in the most shameless way imaginable, but at the same time, act as a narrator and mock his sad, sad exploits.
Of course, the series is also known for its fairly juvenile sense of humor. Like many "mature" rated games, Leisure Suit Larry is best experienced (a) if you put yourself in the mind of a 13-year-old, or (b) if you are, in fact, actually a 13-year-old, and the concept of seeing naked boobs still totally blows your mind.
That may sound like an inappropriate recommendation for kids considering the material, but really, outside of the basic concept, they usually aren't quite as raunchy as its reputation suggests, at least the earlier entries. In the first game, the only real nudity is a portrait of a naked woman in a bar - any actual sex is covered by a censor bar. In the next few games, there are some pixellated boobs and other assorted body parts, but you'd really have to squint and use your imagination to fill in any details anyway. Once the series truly hit VGA with the fifth and sixth games, it added a few easter eggs to get a quick glimpse of nudity, but it got taken a bit further with the seventh game, featuring more numerous and slightly more explicit secrets, and the eighth game features a whole mode that strips all of the female characters of all of their clothes, in addition to some out-and-out softcore scenes.
In fact, the game is far more often about humor than titillation. Leisure Suit Larry is the closest that America has produced to the Japanese dating sims/visual novels that started on the PC scene back in the 80s and continue up until today. The self awareness that you're playing as a loser - like many Sierra games, the narrator often exists to mock Larry's mishaps - serves as a sharp contrast to the ever-so-serious nature of so many visual novels, and makes the whole concept easier to swallow, so to say.
The humor occasionally goes beyond just dick and fart jokes, too. Much like other Sierra games like Space Quest, it has a tendency to break the fourth wall, bringing in characters from other games just for the fun of it. Ken Williams makes several appearances in the games - first, as an annoying drunk at the bar, and later, at the end of the first game, as a spokesperson for later games in the series. He also appears in the second and third installments as the leader of a chief tribe. Al Lowe himself even cameos a few times. The series also tried for a politically correct angle with the introduction of Passionate Patti, a gorgeous bombshell who falls for Larry, whom players could control in the third and fifth games.
At any rate, there are technically seven Larry games in the series, although it completely skips over "Leisure Suit Larry 4" for reasons that may seem strange, but make sense in context. The "true" series essentially stopped after corporate evil overlord Vivendi closed up their adventure game shop and fired everyone, although they kept the Larry property going awhile longer, with the non-adventure game installments Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, as well as a few other mobile and promotional titles.
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry 3
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Leisure Suit Larry 6
Leisure Suit Larry 7
Softporn Adventure - Atari 8-bit/ Apple II / PC DOS (1981)
Anyway, you start the game next to a bar, with only one goal in mind - to get laid. Compared to Infocom text adventures, the parser is extremely poor, and the writing is routinely awful. Both written and programmed by a man named Chuck Benton, it's clear that he's more of a computer engineer than a steamy fiction writer. Everything's very straightforward and completely lacking in both sensuality and personality, which is something you'd expect from a game named "Softporn Adventure". When Al Lowe came in to convert the game to graphical format, he took the basic plot, structure, locations and puzzles, but invented the Larry character and expanded greatly on its sense of humor, which is how we got the first true game, "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards". Softporn Adventure is included in most of the compilations as a bit of history.
Softporn Adventure
Softporn Adventure
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards - PC DOS / Amiga / Atari ST / Apple II (1987)
EGA Cover
VGA Cover
Leisure Suit Larry (EGA)
Before you can even get started, though, you need to answer five questions to prove that you're over 18. Of course, this mostly revolves around American trivia from the 70s, so a lot of it is pretty outdated. But it's easy enough to find the answers in FAQs, or just skip the sequence totally with Alt-X.
Your adventures in Lost Wages revolve around five key areas: Lefty's Bar, the hotel casino, the chapel next door, a discotheque, and a convenience store. The only way to travel from place to place is by hailing a taxi; otherwise you'll get squashed by traffic or beaten to death by vagrants. Traveling costs money, of course, which can only be obtained by gambling at the casino. (You need vast quantities of cash for other activities, too.) One supposes that simple blackjack and slots simulators were viewed as being "value added bonuses" to the core adventure game (and a few of them were actually compiled as a standalone budget release), but it really just slows down the pace of the adventure. Thankfully, it's easy to beat these segments by saving, betting the maximum amount, and then reloading until you win.
There is technically a hooker right at the beginning, but (A) if you choose to proceed with her, Larry comes to the conclusion that it doesn't really count if you pay them, and (B) if you neglected to go to the convenience store and buy a "lubber", you'll almost immediately perish from an STD. In the original EGA version, your crotch starts to glow and then you fall over; in the VGA remake, your balls simply explode. In both versions, if you forget to take off the condom and wander outside, you'll get arrested for public indecency - by Sonny Bonds from Police Quest, no less.
Otherwise, the only visibly available girl to woo is a pretty young blonde named Fawn at the disco, but winning her heart (i.e. convincing her to sleep with you) requires a whole bunch of gifts, the cash for a quickie wedding, and the wine to get her in the mood. Things don't quite work out when she ties Larry to their marital bed before consummating their relationship, steals his money, and takes off. Hope you remembered to get the knife from that hobo! And remember take the rope before you leave, because the hotel room can't be revisited once you leave.
This is one of the only big sticking spots. Since most of the game world can be accessed at any time, there are only a few other unwinnable situations you can find yourself in - most importantly, running out cash and getting stranded. The most awkward is forgetting to grab the ribbon that you get tied up with after hooking up with Fawn - you need it for later, and the hotel room becomes inaccessible after you leave it.
The narrative is also a bit meandering. The game never tells you this, but your ultimate goal is to somehow make it into the penthouse at the top of the hotel. To do this, you need to distract the woman guarding the entrance by giving her a bottle of Spanish fly. (Don't use it on yourself, or you'll get arrested for bestiality (!!), which is thankfully not shown on screen.) This bottle is clearly visible at the beginning of the game, but can only be obtained by using the rope you (hopefully) grabbed after your encounter with Fawn. Of course, the game also never tells you what this bottle is or why you need to get it - it just falls into the "pick up everything that isn't nailed down" philosophy that tends to permeate so many adventure games. Anyway, once you get through all of this, and have a brief, illicit tryst with a blow-up doll, you end up meeting Eve, an attractive woman in a jacuzzi. The only way to woo her is, of course, by giving her the apple you bought from the strange naked man in the barrel outside the casino. (The game tells you that this is actually Steve Jobs. Hating on Apple was even cool back in the 80s!) At this point, Larry succeeds in his goal, and the quest is over. It's not a terribly long game, although this was common of very early Sierra graphics adventures.
Larry's journey is filled with other fairly humorous moments, some cruel, some not. There aren't quite as many random deaths as other Sierra games, as long as you don't flush the toilet in the bar, anyway, which will flood the whole room. In the beginning of the stages of the game, if you somehow manage to perish, a compartment will open up beneath Larry's body and take him to Sierra's laboratory, where Sierra heroes are repaired and reassembled. (These are the invisible scenes that occur when you hit the "restart" button, the game tells you.) In the EGA version, you can find King Graham from King's Quest undergoing treatment, as well as a robot from Space Quest. In the VGA version, Larry is tossed into a blender, where his remains are carried through a tube and reformed into his body. These fourth wall gags became increasingly common throughout the series, as well as other Sierra games.
Also noteworthy is a call to a sex line number, where you're asked for the name of a potential mate, as well as several related questions, which are used to populate a kinky Mad Libs-style scenario. When you try to buy some prophylactics from the convenience store, you're assaulted with an increasingly inane series of options (flavor: spearmint or peppermint?) before the clerk loudly announces your order, and everyone in the store - previously hidden behind the shelves - peers out and call you a pervert. (Amusingly, when you're asked your size, in the VGA version you can only pick "Big", "Huge" and "Large". Regardless of your choice, the clerk will always announce "small" size when he recites your order.)
There are two versions: the original EGA version released in 1987, based on the AGI engine used by King's Quest I - III, and the VGA version, released in 1990, which uses the SCI1 icon-based engine. The lack of the text parser in the VGA version does kind of hurt it. The original EGA version was thoroughly play tested, allowing the developers to see what kind of crazy things that players would try to type in, then use this data to formulate appropriate responses. Earlier Sierra games were pretty bad about this. In the first King's Quest, if you typed in "fuck", it would innocently say "I don't understand 'fuck'". In Leisure Suit Larry, not only is that a valid command, but it will actually elicit some responses, however limited. Many are just generic "Tsk, tsk." And "Yeah, you probably would, too!" remarks, but you can get some funny responses. Try "masturbate" ("Larry, the whole idea was to stop doing that!") or "look at pussy" ("Obviously, restraint is no problem for you, Larry.") It's far from encyclopedic - "suck cock" will respond with "Once you tasted it, you wouldn't want it!" while "suck penis" results in "What's a penis?" You can no longer puke in the toilet, for example, and the hooker won't give you a blowjob. (In the VGA version, she simply refuses; in the EGA version, she bites your member off, causing you to die. This is all done out of sight, at least. Maybe the guys in charge of the remake felt that was too harsh.)
In spite of the theme and language, there isn't much real nudity. Any sex acts are blocked with a big "censored" bar, and other than small bits - a reclining nude on the bar wall, some nipple outlines on some of the girls - are vaguely defined. It's clear that the game is more about making you laugh than getting you aroused, elevating itself out of porn territory.
Ultimately, though, fooling around with the text parser grows old after a few minutes, and the icon-based interface is much easier to work with. Plus, the cartoonish, revamped graphics possess a lot of character that wasn't there in the first place. The pimp in the EGA game is simply an overweight dude in a wifebeater, but in the VGA game, he's clad in traditional pimp garb, and his eyes bug out Looney Tunes-style when you click on the porn channel. This attention to detail is even applied to all NPCs, and even the slightly off skew nature of the backgrounds. It's a huge change in atmosphere, and one that's definitely for the better. The only possible issue is that none of the dialogue features close-up portraits like other Sierra VGA games, other than the women, and even those have changed from their original designs. The hooker in the EGA version looks much skankier - the acne and drooping boobs definitely seals the deal - than her VGA counterpart, who by herself is pretty darn skanky.
A clever addition to the original EGA version is the "boss key" function. Back in the mid-80s, not many people had home computers, and it was largely assumed that a lot of game-playing went on during office hours, when people should have been doing work. The "boss key" makes the game look like a boring, business-like graph...until you look closer and realize that it's measuring different types of condoms. Also, you need to reload or restart the game when you do this, because apparently the game panics and "forgets" every time you do this. Oops. The boss key has found its way into other Sierra games as well, in addition to later Larry entries. The EGA version also features useless "calculator" and "puzzle" functions as a joke.
Despite some of these hang-ups, Leisure Suit Larry still deserves applause for its unique approach to adventure gaming, not only due to its slightly more realistic setting, but also its cavalier attitude. You're not trying to become king, or save the world/galaxy, or solve crimes - you're just trying to get laid. Fair enough.
MP3s Download here
Theme Song (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (EGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (EGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (EGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Leisure Suit Larry (VGA)
Comparison Screenshots
EGA
VGA
If you could create your own little computer people on your monitor, what would the first thing that you'd have them do? Well, the first thing you'd have them do is run around a bit. Then maybe you'd punch them around or create silly scenes of violence. And then maybe strip them of their clothes and make them do each other. (If you doubt this theory, dig up any old Mario Paint SNES cartridge and take a look at any saved animations, provided they haven't been long deleted.) Sierra, purveyor of the first animated graphic adventures back in the early 80s, operated mostly on the same philosophy - take a little stick figure, have them traipse around the scenery, and think of all of the funny ways to get them killed. Of course, being a family owned company during their early years, they mostly stayed away from the "sex" part.
Softporn Adventure is a pioneer, in many ways, as one of the first commercially released adult themed computer games. It's also a bit of a step backward for the company - Sierra made a name for itself developing text adventures with graphics (starting with Mystery House and expanding out into The Wizard and the Princess, Time Zone, and more) yet Softporn Adventure is completely text-based. This was perhaps how the game was able to be released, since there's obviously no actual nudity. (Just note that Roberta Williams, one of the founders of Sierra and creator of the King's Quest series, posed for the cover photograph - she's the woman on the far right.)
Leisure Suit Larry begins in the city of Lost Wages, outside of a shifty bar, with only one goal in mind - to lose your virginity before the night is over. There's a clock in the game, that sorta runs in real time - if you take too long, Larry blows his brains out. Kind of dark, that!
