Leisure suit Larry

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Leisure suit Larry
developer Sierra On-Line
High Voltage Software
Team17
Publisher Sierra On-Line
Codemasters

Assemble entertainment

Designer Al Lowe
First title Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1987)
Last title Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry (2018)
Platform (s) Amiga , Apple II / II GS , Atari ST , MS-DOS , TRS-80 , Windows , Mac OS , PlayStation 2 , PlayStation 3 , Xbox , Xbox 360 , mobile phone
Genre (s) Adventure

Leisure Suit Larry (often referred to as "Larry" ) is an adventure series from Sierra On-Line . The creator and spiritual father of the Larry series is Al Lowe . After the sale of Sierra and the subsequent merger of Vivendi and Activision , the brand was sold to Codemasters. The brand was licensed by Assemble Entertainment at the end of 2017, and Codemasters continues to own the brand.

action

The central plot element of the series are the attempts of the respective protagonist to meet women and find the love of his life. In the 1980s and 1990s, the eponymous mid-forties Larry Laffer was the protagonist, from 2004 his nephew Larry Lovage also took on the lead role.

Game principle and technology

The first game in the series was published in 1987 as an EGA graphics adventure with a text parser . With the keyboard you can navigate Larry Laffer through different places like a bar, a casino or a supermarket. Later parts are implemented as point-and-click adventures . All games have in common the parody of the cheap soft sex movies of the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to the existing eroticism, Larry's embarrassing failure in attempts to conquer attractive, successful women is the focus of the game.

Game title

year Title (english) Title (german) genre Publisher
1987 Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards Adventure Sierra On-Line
1988 Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places) Adventure Sierra On-Line
1989 Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals Adventure Sierra On-Line
1991 Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work Passionate Patti is part of the secret service Adventure Sierra On-Line
1992 Crazy Nick's Software Picks: Leisure Suit Larry's Casino Simulation game Sierra On-Line
1993 Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! Tear open or slide off! Adventure Sierra On-Line
1996 Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! Yacht for love! Adventure Sierra On-Line
1998 Leisure Suit Larry's Casino Simulation game Sierra On-Line
2004 Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude Skill game Vivendi Universal
2004 Leisure Suit Larry: Cool Drinks & Hot Girls Cool drinks & hot girls Skill game Rondomedia
2007 Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail Adventure Vivendi Universal
2009 Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust Open world game Codemasters
2013 Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded Adventure Replay Games
2018 Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry Adventure Assemble entertainment

In addition to the single games, some compilations were released:

  • 1990: Leisure Suit Larry: Triple Pack (Sierra On-Line, contains Leisure Suit Larry 1-3)
  • 1994: Leisure Suit Larry's Greatest Hits and Misses! (Sierra On-Line, contains Leisure Suit Larry 1-6 and various minigames)
  • 1997: Leisure Suit Larry: Collection Series (Sierra On-Line, contains Leisure Suit Larry 1-6 and various minigames)
  • 1999: Leisure Suit Larry: Ultimate Pleasure Pack (Sierra On-Line, contains Leisure Suit Larry 1-7 and Leisure Suit Larry's Casino)
  • 2006: Leisure Suit Larry Collection (Sierra Entertainment, includes Leisure Suit Larry 1-6)
  • 2017: Leisure Suit Larry Collection ( Assemble Entertainment , contains Leisure Suit Larry 1-6 and Leisure Suit Larry - Magna Cum Laude Uncut and Uncensored!)

Production notes

In 1981, On-Line Systems, later renamed Sierra On-Line, published the text adventure Softporn programmed by Charles Benton . Al Lowe was working on edutainment games for Sierra On-Line with Disney characters as protagonists when Sierra lost its Disney license in 1986. Lowe then suggested remaking soft porn and was hired by the Sierra management team to do it.

Larry was the first popular game with a so-called boss key. By pressing the boss key the picture of the game on the monitor disappeared, instead a picture that looked like a calculation was displayed. However, if you take a closer look, you can see that it is a matter of comparing different types of condoms. In addition, after activating the boss key, there was no longer any way to return to the game.

In 1989, a virus- infected copy of Leisure Suit Larry caused millions of pounds of damage to English banks and foreign exchange firms . The program was copied and played on their terminals by the employees. The publication of this incident in the media on the one hand raised public awareness of the subject of computer viruses, on the other hand the rumor was born that all Larry games were infected by a virus. There have been other variants of this rumor over time, for example that the virus is only activated when certain words are entered.

The numbering of the series jumps from 3 to 5 as Al Lowe had previously assured that there will be no part 4 as the ending of Larry 3 makes it difficult to continue. Larry 5 does not follow Larry 3 directly , but Larry suffers from amnesia in the fifth part and has forgotten everything that happened in the (imaginary) fourth part. Al Lowe referred to the fourth part for fun as Leisure Suit Larry - The Missing Floppies ( Eng .: "Leisure Suit Larry - The Missing Diskettes").

Part 7 contains a reference to Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust in Outer Space , which should actually be Part 8 (On board the cruise ship in the game you could not enter some decks with the note - “This deck is reserved for Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust in space "). It was supposed to be released in 1998. However, this game did not appear because Sierra had decided to stop producing adventure games. In 2003 Sierra announced that Magna Cum Laude would be another part of the series. However, this was produced without the involvement of Al Lowe and is very different from the other games in the series. In addition to the switch to 3D graphics , the game content has also shifted from adventure-typical puzzles to simple games of skill.

Al Lowe says of Magna Cum Laude that he was not involved in the development and that the game is not Larry 8 . It is not an adventure game because there are no puzzles, interactive dialogues, no character development and almost no plot. The mini-games are annoying and boring. The main actor this time is called Larry Lovage (spoken by Oliver Pocher in the German version ) and is Larry Laffer's nephew , who, however, does not wear a white polyester suit, the trademark of his uncle.

Oddities

  • In the fourth installment of Space Quest , the computers were infected with a virus called Leisure Suit Larry 4 . This could be deleted, but that was not necessary to quit the game.
  • In the first and third part of the game, the user is previously sent through a small quiz to check his age. However, it is possible to bypass this "barrier" by using (undocumented) key combinations . In the EGA version of the first part it is Alt+ x, in the VGA version of the first part, in the third part and in Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded it is Strg+ Alt+ x.
  • In the second part a manual query is necessary before starting the game. Pictures of certain women need to be assigned to certain phone numbers. By entering the telephone number 555-0724 you could get into the game directly. 0724 represents July 24th, Al Lowe's birthday. (activates debug mode)
  • In the second and third part you could jump to any point in the game using the key combination Strg+ Gand a number. These versions were based on Sierra's own game engine. (only if debug mode has been activated)

reception

The trade magazine Adventure Gamers ranked Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! In 2011 it was ranked 71 on its list of Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Al Lowe on Adventure Classic Gaming. Retrieved June 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Al Lowe: Larry Lovage and Me . Retrieved August 20, 2013.
  3. ↑ AdventureGamers.com: Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games. Retrieved April 30, 2016 .