Larry Laffer was a short, tacky, balding, forty-year-old man who had been living with his mother until recently. He used to be in the software business but decided to leave everything behind as he moved to the city of Lost Wages in pursuit of sexual fulfilment.
Clad in a white polyester leisure suit, Larry found himself outside Lefty’s Bar, determined to finally lose his virginity – or commit suicide if he is unable to achieve that goal before dawn.
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was the first game in Sierra’s Leisure Suit Larry series, largely inspired by the text adventure Softporn Adventure, though with a greatly enhanced script containing more humorous descriptions and dialogue.
The gameplay was similar to other third-person Sierra adventures, with a text parser used to input commands for interaction with a graphical environment. Progress was achieved by collecting various items and figuring out which of those may be essential for conquering the hearts of the several female characters appearing in the game.
The game allowed the player to access most of its locations (a bar, a casino, a convenience store, etc.) from the very beginning, with only a few key ones being barred due to the lack of a crucial item.
Moving between some of the locations could only be done by cab. Paying for those trips, as well as procuring some of the items, required the player to manage Larry’s finance by gambling at the casino.
Typical of Sierra games, progress was tracked through an amount of points, awarded for advancement or minor actions.
There were several ways to die in the game, most presented in a humorous fashion. The game contained adult situations and semi-explicit depictions of sex.
The original 16-colour 1987 game was remade just four years later with new-fangled VGA graphics, an amazing 256 colour palette. Wow!
The remake was possibly the first game to include a trouser zipper icon (no prizes for guessing its function) and definitely the first allowing you to lick random objects.
And as any child of that era can probably still tell you, you could use the Ctrl+Alt+X cheat to bypass the games’ Over-18 age verification quiz.
