In the early winter of 1982, Sunnyside Soft rented a small 10 by 10 feet booth at the San Francisco Civic Center. The last Applefest of the year was just about to open its doors to the public. The open-to-consumer show was a prime gathering for anything and everything Apple. Here software companies together with hardware suppliers would meet and show off their newest products and share their visions with the public. This was the perfect opportunity for the newly formed family and part-time operation conceived by Al Lowe and Mike MacChesney together with wifes Margareth and Ray Lynn, to showcase and market its two educational games, Dragon’s Keep and Bop-A-Bet, created in the months prior.

Al Lowe, an accomplished jazz musician, had been teaching music in public schools for well over a decade and as part of his duties with the school district, he had become somewhat involved with computers. When he contracted chickenpox and was confined to his home, he started exploring the school district’s PDP-11/70 minicomputer remotely. The exploration sparked his interest and in the time that followed, he borrowed various personal computers from the district before acquiring his first own computer, an Apple II Plus. Initially with the intent to write software that could help make his job easier but was soon enjoying several of the early graphic adventures from On-Line Systems together with his son.

Inspired by the games and with a background in education, Lowe decided to give the computer a try as an educational platform combining arcade and adventure with simple learning principles. An endeavor that led to three developed titles, two of which were completed in time for the Applefest.

While the show experience was completely new and uncharted territory for Sunnyside Soft, On-Line Systems, one of the major players in the emerging consumer software market, had been at it for the better part of two years. Ken and Roberta Williams had initially built the company upon its early graphic adventure games but had swiftly established a presence in the lucrative action and arcade market.

The On-Line Systems booth was filled with its large portfolio of games, most playable on displays prominently mounted so everybody passing by wouldn’t miss them. The booth had a huge photo mural of a Yosemite National Park waterfall. Ken and a hesitant Roberta had earlier sold 20% of the company to venture capitalist Jackie Morby of TA Associates. Becoming a real corporation required a unique company name and On-Line Systems was becoming Sierra-On-Line, with the famous Yosemite landmark, the Half Dome, as its logo.

Ken Williams was highly regarded in the software industry and liked and respected by many. When he went on the show floor he was met with smiles, conversations, and handshakes. One handshake that December would eventually come to leave a memorable and lasting mark on gaming history.

Sunnyside Soft’s small but well-visited booth had a couple of Apple II computers installed for people coming by to try out the two titles. When Ken and Roberta toured the show floor they made their way by the booth and immediately became intrigued by how graphically similar the games looked to their own and very successful Hi-Res adventure games. They introduced themselves and ended up offering to buy the rights to the entire Sunnyside Soft product line, to market and publish through Sierra On-Line.

At Sunnyside Soft’s modest yet well-visited booth, a few Apple II computers were set up, inviting visitors to experience the two titles. During their tour of the show floor, Ken and Roberta Williams made their way by the booth and were immediately captivated by the striking graphical resemblance between the displayed games and their own highly successful Hi-Res adventure games. Introducing themselves and ended up extending an offer to acquire the rights to the three Sunnyside Soft developed titles, with the intention to market and publish them through Sierra On-Line.

With the plans of entering the rapidly expanding home educational software market, now nearly outpacing all other segments in the industry, Ken recognized the need for suitable products, and Sunnyside Soft’s titles aligned perfectly.

Although Dragon’s Keep and Bop-A-Bet had already been marketed in educational magazines and sold for a few months from Al and Margaret’s home, the prospect of having one of the industry’s largest publishers support their products with professional packaging, marketing, and distribution was an opportunity too valuable to pass up. While other software publishers had expressed interest in the games, Al and Margaret opted to partner with Ken and Roberta. Not only did they offer the most favorable deal but they were local too, situated at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range only about 50 miles north of Fresno.

Little did Lowe know that the encounter would turn out to change the course of his life. In the summer of 1983, he left his stable and professional career behind, became a fully-fledged game designer at Sierra, and on the side built a lifelong friendship with the Williamses.

Al Lowe’s second game, Bop-A-Bet, an educational game to teach kids letter recognition and alphabetization.
This was one of two titles Sunnyside Soft brought to the Applefest in 1982.
Bop-A-Bet was re-released by Sierra On-Line in 1983.
Both of these were Al Lowe’s personally kept copies. I was fortunate enough to acquire both of them

While Sierra On-Line would struggle around the time of the North American Video Game Recession in 1983, a partnership with IBM would make the company reinvent the adventure game and herald it into the mainstream with Roberta’s hugely successful King’s Quest.
Despite the positive reception of King’s Quest, Sierra continued to grapple with financial difficulties in 1984. As a result, the company was forced to undergo a significant downsizing, leading to the departure of numerous programmers and designers, including Lowe.

Sierra still required the expertise of programmers and many went from being employees to being independently contracted, including Lowe who came to terms on a contract agreement based on royalties. The new working circumstances proved to be a good fit for Lowe, along with a few other programmers, as they adapted to working from home and meeting project deadlines but challenges arose when several games faced delays or remained incomplete due to a lack of self-discipline among some programmers.

Sierra would come to an agreement with The Walt Disney Company, leading to the development of educational games centered around various Disney characters. At the time, Disney did not have its own team of developers, and Sierra On-Line, with its track record of successful graphic adventures, proved to be an excellent fit for bringing the beloved Disney characters to life in digital form. Given Lowe’s background in music and expertise in educational games, he was the perfect candidate to work on the new endeavors.

Sierra’s venture with The Walt Disney Company resulted in three educational titles published in 1984 (bottom row). The titles were later released in 1986 (top row).
Al Lowe was involved in all three titles, designing Winnie the Pooh and Donald Duck’s Playground and writing the music for Roberta William’s Mickey’s Space Adventure

Disney, impressed with Lowe’s educational adventure Troll’s Tale, the one game from the Sunnyside Soft days that didn’t make it to the Applefest but was released by Sierra in 1983 and 1984, asked him to design an intuitive kids’ adventure game based on its 1985 movie The Black Cauldron.

Artist Mark Crowe, who later would come to work with Lowe on his first Leisure Suit Larry title, created the graphics. The Black Cauldron was released in 1986 and became the last title in the joint venture between Disney and Sierra. Following the departure, The Walt Disney Company, in 1988, incorporated Walt Disney Computer Software, Inc. as a subsidiary. Primarily to have third-party developers design games based on the company’s existing portfolio.

The Black Cauldron, released for nearly every major platform in 1986 and 1987, was the last title in the joint venture between Sierra and Disney

Back in 1981, during a trade show, Williams had met Chuck Benton, who was promoting and selling his text-only adventure game, Softporn Adventure. Despite On-Line Systems’ reputation for graphic adventures, Williams was intrigued by the game and decided to publish it under the On-Line Systems label. This move proved highly successful, with Softporn Adventure selling an estimated 50,000 copies, temporarily doubling the company’s sales. The game receive notable coverage when it was prominently featured in Time Magazine’s first column on computer entertainment titled “Software for the Masses.” Despite its unconventional and more adult-oriented content, the coverage generated significant market exposure. Time Magazine even included the famous cover photo, showing an Apple II computer and a waiter presenting Champagne to three naked women, one of whom was Roberta Williams.

Friends who tried Benton’s adult-oriented text adventure enjoyed it and encouraged him to try and publish it.
Under the company name, Blue Sky Software, Benton sold around 100 copies.
Softporn was released by On-Line Systems for the Apple II (Left) and the Atari 8-bit (Right).
Chris Iden who did the Atari port, was, for a decade, one of the technological forces within Sierra and helped author its adventure game development systems. Iden left Sierra in 1991, like designer Jim Walls, for newly formed Tsunami Media

While Softporn was removed from the Sierra catalog when the company had entered into a licensing agreement with Disney, the deal was now in the past, and with the majority of the company’s titles centered around family-friendly fantasy, the concept of developing another themed game made sense.

At the time, Infocom’s Leather Goddess of Phobos, a humorous and slightly risqué text-only adventure game, enjoyed much success without generating much controversy despite its more mature content. Recognizing this, Williams and Lowe agreed that an updated version of Softporn Adventure, leveraging the company’s established and successful Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI), was a possibility.

After finishing King’s Quest III, Lowe returned home and decided to replay Softporn. He found that the game, even by the standards of its time, lacked sophistication and depth. It was without a defined protagonist, had minimal or no plot, and, of course, had no graphics. When Lowe conveyed his feedback to Williams, he humorously remarked that the game was so outdated it might as well be wearing a ’70s leisure suit. The remark stuck and eventually became an integral part of the game and the franchise as a whole.

The basic structure of Softporn, its puzzles, characters, and locations were all solid but the text had to go. The only way to update the game was essential to parodies on it. Lowe was known as the good humor guy at Sierra, always cracking jokes, and while he never had written a comedy before this proved a perfect opportunity to finally put some of his fun and prankster personality into a game.

Embracing the belief that games not only should be entertaining but funny as well, Lowe went to work and discarded the existing text and proceeded to rewrite the entire game with a whimsical and, at times, explicit sense of humor, not only to make fun of the lifestyle portrayed but also to create comical situations that would embarrass and amuse the player, who would be personified through the main character. Lowe crafted a middle-aged ill-polyester-dressed virgin nerd par excellence partially based on guys he had seen hustling women when he was a musician playing gigs at clubs in the ’70s. 

With the text and main storyline established, Lowe proceeded to compile a comprehensive list of animations, scenes, and characters necessary for the successful implementation of puzzles and the progression of the narrative. Artist Mark Crowe, who was working full time on Scott Murphy and his Space Quest, dedicated four weeks of evenings and weekends to creating the detailed artwork. To this Lowe injected various humorous interactions and incorporated clue-giving messages throughout the game. Crowe also provided contributions to puzzle design and humoristic features.

After about three months Lowe had rewritten and programmed his humoristic take on Softporn Adventure. This was Lowe’s first go at a text-parser-driven adventure game. All his earlier titles had been using a simplified interaction method and he was somewhat afraid that he might have missed things when players typed in words that didn’t necessarily make sense. In the spring of 1987, the game was beta-tested for Lowe to track what players would type in and where in the game, for him to create responses, usually funny remarks that made sense in the context.

After undergoing two months of rigorous testing and refinement, development was entering its final stages. It became evident that utilizing the word “porn” in the title was ill-advised. While the controversy surrounding its use back in 1981 had arguably boosted sales, it also brought its own share of complications. John Williams, Ken’s younger brother, and Sierra’s marketing director, came up with the name, Leisure Suit Larry which would eventually be paired with the subtitle “in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, a term referring to both a 1970s eclectic jazz group and a term for a well-dressed man who frequented upscale establishments, aiming to seduce wealthy women through flattery and deceptive charm, none of which Larry possessed.

To provide Larry with a suitable last name and given the theme of having each word in the title start with an “L,” Lowe turned to the L volume of Encyclopedia Britannica for inspiration. The first name that came to his attention was “Arthur Laffer”, a member of the Reagan Administration Economic Policy Advisory Board.

With the beta testing out of the way and a name in place. Larry Laffer’s comedic escapades in pursuing the hearts and pants of the opposite sex all while trying to reinvent himself as the cool guy, during one night in the city of Lost Wages was complete and released in June of 1987.

Al Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry was released in the summer of 1987 for IBM/PC and most other major platforms.
Sierra, uncertain of how the game would be received alongside cutbacks on advertising in general, led, marketing-wise, to a silent release.
The game’s pink box, also designed by Mark Crowe, helped set it apart on the shelves.
Word by mouth and coverage in magazines resulted in the game becoming the company’s second-best-selling title of the time.

On the left, Al Lowe’s personal copy, for the Apple II, which I acquired some years back. On the right, the 16-color EGA version for the IBM/PC, and on the bottom, the 1991 256 VGA release in the original pink box, only sold very briefly before it was released in a redesigned box

Lowe was talented, in multiple fields, and his role at Sierra had always been considerably diverse. Spending 16 years as an educator alongside being a high school band teacher, he had an exceptional ability to communicate, something that, alongside the beta-testing manifested in Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards being one of the best games of the time to employ a text-parser-driven interface.

Having played professional jazz since the age of 13 and earlier written the music for the company’s Disney titles, alongside all of the music for Roberta’s King’s Quest II, it was only natural Lowe would write the game’s main theme, a swinging jazzy arrangement. The main theme score would become one of adventure gaming’s most recognizable.

Unsure of how Leisure Suit Larry would be received with its content deemed offensive by some, management chose to release it without any publicity or advertising budget. At the time of its release, the company was facing some minor financial issues and had cut back on advertising and instead relied more heavily on PR.

While the content, with adult situations, risqué language, and sexual innuendos, surely was daringly explicit for a game at the time, it was not vastly different from what was commonly seen in movies or on evening television. The primary distinction was that games were predominantly perceived as entertainment for kids. Many of the bigger chains of computer stores refused to sell the game, finding the adult content inappropriate and resulting in first-month sales numbers lower than any other Sierra product launch in years, with only 4.000 sold copies. Despite controversy marketing managed to garner some major coverage in popular gaming magazines at the time which attracted significant attention.

With Lowe working as a contractor and agreeing to develop the game on spec, meaning without payment against a higher royalty, that year’s Christmas initially looked a little bleak with him earning $2-3 for every sold copy. But the game quickly gained momentum through word-of-mouth, and by the end of the year, it had achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success, capturing the hearts of gamers everywhere. Retailers came to realize that the game was not malicious or exploitative but rather humorously risqué in an innocent manner and was indeed safe to sell.

Sales would double every month and by the end of the year, over 250,000 copies of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards had been sold, making it Sierra’s second best-selling title at the time, surpassed only by King’s Quest III.
In total, the title would go on to sell over 300.000 copies and serve as the foundation for one of Sierra’s longest-running series.

The famous quiz with age-specific questions, to prove you were not a kid, led to many brute-force attempts to access the game. Ken Williams, vary of bad publicity, wanted to be sure that anyone playing Leisure Suit Larry was at least screened and insisted on the quiz.
While Leisure Suit Larry was basically structured upon Softporn Adventure, a simple and very short experience, Lowe filled the game with humorous content. This complete play-through only shows a small percentage of everything, a large part of the experience was exploring and interacting with every object, person, and location.
Artist Mark Crowe created the artwork for a stunning night out in the city, accompanied by Al Lowe’s swinging main theme

While Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry helped pave the way for games with more mature themes and content, the initial controversy also generated the introduction of the Leisure Suit Larry bill, by the California State Legislature, to prohibit adult-oriented content in computer games. Fortunately, the legislation died in committee and the freedom of expression in games was preserved, thanks largely to the persistent effort of the software industry.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards would become one of the most pirated software titles of the time. It seemed that everyone with a computer felt the need to possess this game, for reasons unknown. Piracy became so rampant that pirated copies of the game often became a way to spread computer viruses. In late 1988, the New Accountant and the Financial Times reported that multiple banks and trading houses in Europe were hit with a virus that destroyed data. It was discovered that the virus had originated from bored traders attempting to load pirated copies of Leisure Suit Larry. Sierra eventually had to respond to complaints stating “No, official copies of the game were not going to destroy your computer and potentially bring down the global banking system.”

With Leisure Suit Larry’s commercially slow start in the market and with Jim Walls’ first Police Quest running behind, Lowe took over the programming and helped with the writing to complete it for the important 1987 Christmas season.

By 1988, advancements in technology had reached a point where more powerful computers could support higher-resolution full-screen graphics, more detailed animations, and immersive music scores resembling those found in movies. In contrast, the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) framework, which had been originally created for the first King’s Quest game in 1983, was gradually becoming outdated. Recognizing the need to evolve, Sierra began the development of a new game engine and in the spring of 1988, successfully completed the initial version of their object-oriented game engine, the Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI0).

When Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest IV, the first game to be developed in SCI0, debuted as an invitation-only preview at the Consumer Electronics Show in June of 1988 the reaction from the audience was overwhelming. Using much more detailed graphics, animation, sound, and music, the experience was unparalleled to anything seen earlier and touched the audience on a deeper emotional level. While Sierra was concerned about leaving behind potential customers with lower-end machines, they strategically released both an AGI version and an SCI version simultaneously. It soon became evident that a significant portion of the market was at the forefront of technology, just like Sierra and the SCI version of King’s Quest IV became a massive success, leading to Sierra’s other big adventure franchises, including the upcoming and highly anticipated second title in the Leisure Suit Larry series, switching to the new advanced framework.

When Lowe had completed programming on Walls’ Police Quest, along with some serious rewriting to make it playable by people without a police background, he yet again turned to Larry Laffer. With the huge success of the first title and with Softporn Adventure’s dictating influence out of the way, Lowe could finally write his very own game without being influenced by any outside parties, nonetheless, the adult-oriented content and Lowe’s trademark raunchiness were all toned down due to the criticisms of the first title.

The story continues the plot from the first but takes a broader and more expansive approach. Having lost his virginity in the first game, Larry is now on a quest to find genuine love. A series of bizarre events take Larry from winning the lottery to being featured on an ’80s dating show, chased by KGB agents, to fighting a supervillain in a volcanic lair on an exotic island before finally finding true love.

The storyline of the game is more intricate, aiming to provide a cinematic experience with extended cut scenes. Unlike its predecessor, it follows a highly linear plot progression and focuses less on exploration. This approach gives players a distinct and different gaming experience, with a stronger emphasis on storytelling and scripted events.

The Linear story progression came not only from Lowe wanting more plot development but also from the game being structured in stages to fit on multiple floppy disks, without the need for constant disk swapping. This resulted in dead ends when you forgot essential items in earlier stages as the only way to go back was to restore an earlier saved game but this was an issue with many of Sierra’s adventure games and players knew to save early and to save often.

In late October of 1988, the highly anticipated sequel to the original game was released under the title Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places). The game received mostly positive reviews from critics, praising its advancements in graphics, gameplay, and storytelling but fans of the first title expressed disappointment with the sequel’s toned-down level of explicit content. While the first game had pushed boundaries with its adult-oriented humor, the second installment adopted a slightly more restrained approach, not resonating as strongly with certain fans.

Leisure Suit Larry (2) Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places) was released in 1988 for the IBM/PC, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST

Leisure Suit Larry 2 went on to sell over 250.000 copies and solidified the Leisure Suit Larry franchise as one of the most successful in the adventure game genre in the late ’80s.

Leisure Suit Larry (2); Goes Looking for Love (In Several Wrong Places), released in 1988. Using the first iteration of the SCI framework allowed for full-screen 16-color EGA graphics, mouse for navigation, and sound card support, for sounds and music.
The switch to SCI0 surely looked and sounded great but the realistic visual style didn’t really fit the game or its personality
The age-specific quiz was dropped for a Filth Meter that could be adjusted during gameplay.
A Boss key was implemented which instantly could replace the game screen with something more appropriate if your boss, parents, or wife were to come by

In January 1989, Al Lowe started work on the third installment in his Leisure Suit Larry series. This game was intended to be the final chapter in Larry’s journey, where he would finally find genuine love and establish a lasting relationship. Taking into account feedback from fans, Lowe decided to reintroduce the more adult-oriented content that had been a hallmark of the original game. Adjustments to the artistic style used in the second title were made and the more realistic and potentially out-of-place visuals were refined to better suit the overall theme and atmosphere of the series.

By the late 1980s, the competition in the adventure game genre was becoming increasingly intense. George Lucas’ Games Division was on the march and its approach to adventure games was intuitive and player-friendly. Lucasfilm Games had, in 1987 released Maniac Mansion, a graphic point-and-click adventure game with multiple playable characters. The title would come to have a significant influence on the future of the genre, particularly with its point-and-click interface, which would become the standard further down the road.

To push the boundaries of the Leisure Suit Larry series and to keep up with the evolving competition, Lowe set himself up with a challenge, for the player to be able to switch roles mid-game, a first at Sierra. In the first part, players would play as Larry, and in the last part as Passionate Patty, the somewhat female counterpart to Larry Laffer.

The story continues from the second title. A few years have passed with Larry happily enjoying life with his exotic wife Kalalau, or so he thought. The playable intro reveals that he’s not only being dumped by his wife, for an Amazonian Harley-riding lesbian cannibal slot-machine repair woman but also fired from his job. The game departs from the linear story progression of the second title and brings back many beloved elements from the first game to much fanfare.

While Lowe had primarily been developing the first two titles from his Fresno home, to accommodate the larger team and the more complex game development process, Ken Williams decided to open up a small office in Fresno. Here Lowe along with fellow programmer Carlos Escobar, artist Bill Skirvin, who also had been working on graphics for the second title, and quality assurance lead Robin Bradley could develop the game without the need for cumbersome commutes to and from Oakhurst.

Lowe had composed the music for the two earlier titles but now being fully occupied with the story, game design, and programming of a more complex game led to composer Mike Dana writing the enjoyable and fitting soundtrack. Dana had previously composed jingles for national ad campaigns and would after completing his work at Sierra become the Director of Jazz Studies at Fresno City College for the better part of the next three decades.

Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals was released for the IBM/PC, Atari ST, and Amiga in 1989

The third installment in the series, in my opinion, the best of the first three titles. Mike Dana’s accompanied and continuous soundtrack sounded great and gave the game an exotic ambiance.
The game felt more like the original than what the second title had offered and the visual style was more fitting.
The age-specific quiz returned, your ability to answer the questions, determined at which dirty level you would be able to play.

Leisure Suit Larry III would like its predecessors, become a commercial hit and received critical acclaim. when the ’80s turned into the ’90s Lowe’s Larry trilogy had sold over three-quarters of a million copies, pretty good for a game, initially deemed too dirty for gaming.
Following, Lowe and his family moved into a new house, in Fresno, deservedly called Casa de Larry, a tribute to his Leisure Suit Larry games which had helped pay for it.

While all my copies are sealed I had the opportunity to borrow my brother’s open copies to show the content. Unfortunately, Lefty’s Napkin is missing from the first game box

Good companions were always handy when trying to complete any Sierra adventure.
Ralph Rogers The official Book of Leisure Suit Larry, written with help from Al Lowe, is a great and humorous insight into the games.
Mostly written as a conversation between Lowe and Larry, it provides stories, development insights, and hints making the most of the games

In the next part, we’ll look at how Lowe successfully managed to continue the story of what was otherwise considered a completed trilogy.
The switch to SCI1 with the release of King’s Quest V would herald a new era for Sierra On-Line with point-and-click and 256 color graphics, getting in position to tackle the ever-growing demands of the consumer market and the competition. The battle was on, ultimately resulting in the golden age of adventure games. Here we would not only come to see multiple new installments in the Leisure Suit Larry series but a remake of the original as well. Lowe’s tongue-in-cheek humor would evolve alongside Larry’s character, evolving from an enthusiastic ignorant, and innocent nerd to what could be considered somewhat of a pervert… but that’s all to come.

Sources: Allow.com, Wikipedia, The Sierra Adventure by Shawn Mills, MEL Magazine, Retrogamer, IGN, Ralph Roberts, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy…