Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Cover art of the 1987 Amiga version
Developer(s)	Sierra On-Line
Publisher(s)	Sierra On-Line
Designer(s)	Al Lowe, Mark Crowe
Programmer(s)	Al Lowe, Ken Williams
Artist(s)	Mark Crowe
Writer(s)	Al Lowe, Chris Benton
Composer(s)	Al Lowe
Series	Leisure Suit Larry
Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, Apple IIGS, TRS-80
Release date(s)	NA July 5, 1987 (original release) NA July 1991 (remake)
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is a graphic adventure game originally released in 1987 as the first part of the Leisure Suit Larry series. Originally developed for DOS and the Apple II, it was later ported to other platforms such as the Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIGS and the TRS-80 Color Computer. It utilizes the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine made famous by King's Quest: Quest for the Crown.

Set in the fictional city of Lost Wages, the story follows Larry Laffer, a middle-aged male virgin, as he tries to "get lucky". Land of the Lounge Lizards establishes several elements which recur in the later Larry games, including Larry's campy attire, perpetual bad luck with women, and penchant for double-entendres. The story and basic structure of the game are lifted from Softporn Adventure, an 1981 Apple II text adventure.

Despite a lack of advertising, the game was a sleeper hit and a commercial and critical success. In 1991, Sierra released a remake that used the Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI) engine with 256 colors and a point-and-click, icon-driven (as opposed to text-based) user interface. A second, high-definition remake/reboot, titled Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded, is currently under development by N-Fusion Interactive and Replay Games working with series' creator Al Lowe for a planned May 31, 2013 release for Microsoft Windows (via Steam, OnLive), Mac OS X, iOS, Android, and Linux.

Plot

Larry Laffer is a 40-year old man who lives in his mother's basement and has not yet lost his virginity. Having grown weary of his lonely existence, he decides to visit the resort city of Lost Wages to experience what he has not lived before, and find the woman of his dreams, starting with nothing but an out-of-style 1970s disco-era leisure suit and $94 in his pocket. Larry's quest involves four possible women: a nameless, seedy-looking prostitute; Fawn, a club-goer of low moral fiber; Faith, a receptionist who (true to her name) is faithful to her boyfriend; and Eve, a bathing beauty and Larry's ultimate goal.

Gameplay

The starting scene of the game (PC EGA)

The game begins outside a bar in Lost Wages (a parody of Las Vegas). Players are given two real-time hours to complete the game, at which point a despairing Larry commits suicide, resulting in game over. The time limit can be circumvented by speaking to a prostitute (see below). Players control Larry's movements with the directional keys and by inputing commands into a text parser (e.g. "talk to man", "open window", etc.). If Larry is too far away from a person or object to comply, or if the command is invalid, a caution message appears with hints on what to do.

The city consists of five areas: Lefty's Bar, a hotel casino, a 24-hour wedding chapel, a discothèque, and a convenience store. The player can walk between areas that are next to each other, but other areas can only be accessed by hailing a taxi, which costs the player money; failure to do so results in Larry being mugged or hit by oncoming traffic. During the early stages of the game, Larry can survive most premature "deaths": In the original release, a compartment opens beneath Larry's body and takes him to a laboratory where heroes from Sierra's computer games — such as King's Quest — are re-assembled; in the remake, Larry's remains are instead thrown inside a blender and reformed.

A prostitute is available as soon as the game starts. Should Larry have intercourse with her, he will contract a sexually-transmitted disease and die shortly thereafter. This fate may be avoided by buying a condom at the convenience store; however, Larry questions the validity of losing his virginity to a hooker, and the game resumes (though the time limit is removed).

Larry's interactions with key women are accompanied by a detailed image of whomever he is speaking with, unlike other non-player characters. Each of the women (with the exception of the prostitute) shun Larry at first, but respond favourably to gifts of varying sorts. Although it is not possible to woo all of the women, giving gifts is needed to advance to the game's final area, the hotel penthouse. To this end, money is essential to advance through the game. The only available method of augmenting Larry's funds is to gamble in the casino, playing blackjack and slots.

Development

Fawn in the 1991 remake (PC VGA)

Al Lowe, a former high school teacher, had carved a niche for himself at Sierra with his work on such Disney-licensed edutainment titles as Donald Duck's Playground, Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, and The Black Cauldron, which he wrote, designed and programmed. In 1982, Sierra had released a text-only game on the Apple II titled Softporn Adventure (it was the only text adventure that was released by a company which had established its name on providing a graphical alternative to such games). In 1986, after Sierra lost a Disney license, Al Lowe suggested that Sierra remake Softporn Adventure with the improved tools now at their disposal, and Ken Williams agreed.

Lowe, who considered the original Softporn Adventure "a primitive, early effort", borrowed its basic structure and added a graphic game engine (Adventure Game Interpreter), improvised humor, and an on-screen protagonist, Larry Laffer. Chuck Benton, creator of Softporn Adventure, is included in the Leisure Suit Larry's end credits, as the layout and puzzles of the game are identical to those found in the earlier title. However, Lowe said that in Softporn Adventure "there were no characters in the game. There was no central character at all. There were almost no characters to the women. And so it was a real role-over. I think there’s one line of dialogue that I kept of the original game and all the rest was fresh."

The game was co-designed and illustrated by Mark Crowe, creator of the Space Quest series, and co-programmed by Ken Williams. An accomplished jazz musician (The Lounge Lizards being a jazz band's name), Lowe also wrote the main theme music (called "For Your Thighs Only"), and some of his compositions appear in later entries of the series. The theme, inspired by Irving Berlin's 1929 song "Alexander's Ragtime Band", was composed within 20 minutes. Lowe said it "sounded so unusual, so different, so fresh compared to most computer game music, that I decided to write something with the same pep, simplicity, humor, and out-of-sync attitude."

For the first remake, Al Lowe served as director and designer, also helping to program the game, and Ken Williams became executive producer. Other key people included Stuart Moulder (producer), William R. Davis Sr. (creative director), William D. Skirvin (art designer), Mark Seibert (music director), Oliver Brelsford (lead programmer), and the music other than the theme song was composed by Chris Braymen. The 1991's Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards used the new game engine Sierra's Creative Interpreter and was released in 1991 for the Amiga, DOS and Macintosh platforms.

Due to the adult nature of the game, the game includes an age verification system consisting of trivia questions that Al Lowe assumed children would not know the answer to. As many of the questions are U.S.-centric, they risked frustrating non-American gamers. If played today, the questions also include out-of-date cultural references. (One question begins "OJ Simpson is..." and one wrong answer is "under indictment.") In the original AGI version, the age verification screen may be skipped by pressing Alt-X (or in the 1991 SCI remake, by pressing Ctrl-Alt-X).

Reception

“	My initial reaction was that I had wasted six months of my life.	”
—Al Lowe

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	80.67%
Review scores
Publication	Score
Adventure Gamers	(1987 version)
Adventure Classic Gaming
Amiga Action	90%
The Games Machine	83%
Awards Entity Award SPA Best Fantasy, Role Playing or Adventure Game of 1987

Unsure of how the game would be received, Sierra's management chose to release it with no publicity or advertising budget. Unsurprisingly, its first-month sales were lower than any new Sierra product launch in years, initially selling only 4,000 copies, and many stores refused to stock the game because of its adult content. However, word-of-mouth spread quickly; by year’s end, the game became a critical and commercial success, selling over 250,000 copies. According to Sierra's marketing director John Williams, "Obviously lots of retailers were selling lots of Leisure Suit Larry, but no one wanted to admit it." It also became widely pirated, including in the Soviet Union. According to Lowe, a film adaptation was considered and he was flown to Hollywood to demonstrate the game in person. Footage from the game was used in the 1990 music video for Sailor's song "The Secretary".

According to the review by The Games Machine, Leisure Suit Larry for the Atari ST was entertaining and very enjoyable, even if "wholeheartedly sexist". Reviewer for Amiga Action wrote that the 1991 remake's "advanced graphics and new control system have improved the game by a huge degree", but "without a hard drive it is slow and almost a chore to play" and those who played the original "will probably find the new edition a waste of time and little more than an exercise in pretty pictures." In 2004, Adventure Gamers wrote: "Despite its weaknesses, it's a bonafide gaming classic, a must-play for adventure history buffs as well as those who just like risqué humor."

In 1988, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was given an award for the Best Fantasy, Role Playing or Adventure Game of 1987 by the Software Publishers Association. In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 69th best game of all time, also ranking it as the fifth most funny computer game, and stating: "Base, sexist, sometimes scatological humor, with no concessions made to taste or sensibilities, this was the best of a funny series." FHM included it on its 2011 list of six games "that shamelessly used sex to sell" but adding that it was actually "funny, well-crafted, and well-written" and "has become kind of like a cult classic among gaming fans." In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time, commenting: "A humor-filled adventure game that wasn’t bashful about showing some skin? The world hadn’t seen anything like it."

Remake

Main article: Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded

Developer N-Fusion Interactive and publisher Replay Games are working on a modern point-and-click remake of the original game with updated HD graphics, fully vocalized audio, and various enhancements to the original like new puzzles and new characters.

External links

• Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards at MobyGames