This is the second part of my Leisure Suit Larry venture. You can find the first part here.

As the ’80s transitioned into the ’90s, Al Lowe could finally take a well-deserved break from the Leisure Suit Larry series. The trilogy had been a tremendous success both commercially and critically, with each installment selling approximately 250,000 copies, a remarkable feat measured in ’80s metrics.

Lowe didn’t completely abandon Larry and started working on a smaller project using Larry Laffer and the trademark humor from the games to create a spoof on popular desktop utility suites like the Norton Utilities. The Laffer Utilities provided you with wacky nonproductive pastimes that would make you look busy even when doing absolutely nothing worthwhile and came with the tagline, For everything you do at the office that has nothing to do with work.

After a demanding development process that had required intense dedication from Lowe and his team to meet the 1989 holiday season deadline, Lowe made a firm decision that he would not pursue another Leisure Suit Larry game. The story of Larry Laffer had been concluded in a satisfying manner, and Lowe wanted to explore new creative avenues.

Lowe didn’t completely abandon the universe as he started to work on a smaller project, using Larry Laffer and the trademark humor from the games to create a spoof on popular desktop utility suites like the Norton Utilities. The Laffer Utilities provided you with wacky nonproductive pastimes that would make you look busy even when doing absolutely nothing worthwhile and came with the tagline, “For everything you do at the office that has nothing to do with work.“

The Laffer Utilities was released for MS-DOS in the fall of 1990. The first version of the software was, in typically Al Lowe fashion, labeled version 4.01.
A Windows 3.X version was released in 1992 to take advantage of Microsoft’s enhanced graphical user interface introduced with Windows 3.0, the first Windows to gain significant development and commercial traction

Following the release of The Laffer Utilities, Lowe and Ken Williams brainstormed on an online multiplayer Leisure Suit Larry title. Williams, inspired by the Prodigy online service launched in 1988, had invested two years in developing the first game-only online environment, The Sierra Network. When the service was launched in May of 1991 the company was eager to add already known and successful games to the service to attract monthly paying customers.

To adapt Leisure Suit Larry to an online environment, a dedicated office was established, and a team was assembled in early 1991. However, the project faced numerous technical challenges and complexities. As development progressed, it became increasingly apparent that the project would require significant resources and expertise to meet the technical requirements of an online multiplayer game and as a result, the project was abandoned.

The previous year, the latest installment in the company’s flagship series, King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!, had been released to massive success and numerous awards. Selling more than 500,000 copies it became Sierra On-Line’s best-selling game for the next five years.
Development had switched from the aging AGI and SCI0 to the newest SCI1 framework allowing for beautiful and detailed 256-color VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface. With the internal development tools at Sierra being in a constant state of flux, there was a saying within the company, only switch to the latest tools when Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest had been successfully released using the same set of tools. With the success of King’s Quest V, the other major franchises would all adopt the new framework.

Lowe was commissioned to continue his Leisure Suit Larry saga and began working on ideas for a 4th game. The two earlier titles had been story-driven and by tying everything up nicely in the 3rd, with Larry and Passionate Patti living happily ever after, continuing the story proved a challenge. 
While struggling with how to start and continue the story, Lowe went down to the Sierra office in Oakhurst, in the hallway he was asked if he was working on a Leisure Suit Larry 4. With a cocky remark, he replied, No, Larry 5! Of course, I’m working on Larry 4!  With the remark, he realized that by completely skipping the story of a 4th title he could write and design a new story unconstrained of what had happened in the previous game.

In 1991, when Lowe wrote the design document he incorporated some hints to what had happened in the time following the third title, allowing players to envision some of the missing story themselves. In true Lowe fashion, the new title was labeled Leisure Suit Larry 5 to much confusion to everybody else but himself and his team. Furthermore, the design document reveals some of the challenges of doing a Leisure Suit Larry game in the new era, where point-and-click interaction now was the expected standard. While the consumer market indeed praised the intuitive player-friendly interaction method, heralded primarily by main competitor, Lucasfilm Games, the Leisure Suit Larry titles were very much built on the basis that players, using the text parser could type in whatever they wanted (usually all kinds of profanities and absurd actions) and the game would respond with humorous messages. To allow players to perform these more raunchy actions, the team added a zipper action icon.

The text parser had also allowed for the conception of nearly every thinkable (and unthinkable) puzzle resulting in time-consuming solutions when words or phrases had to be guessed, ultimately delivering lengthier and more difficult-to-complete games.
At the time, Williams and marketing had done a survey, using the warranty cards, people would send in and realized that a majority of players didn’t manage to complete the company’s adventure titles before moving on to other games. With this in mind, Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry 5 became the company’s guinea pig, for trying to create a more player-friendly and easier-to-complete adventure game while trying to employ all the trademarks of a Larry game.

Lowe expanded on the multi-character approach used in the third title, with control periodically switching between Larry and Passionate Patti. Who together but apart would take on organized crime. Larry finds himself in the adult film industry, working a low-level job for PornProdCorp, a mob-affiliated company. His boss, with an ulterior motive, sends him across the country to scout for models to appear in America’s Sexiest Home Videos. All the while Patti gets hired by the FBI to dig up incriminating evidence on two record companies both suspected of hiding subliminal messages in their songs. Along with the story and plot, clues were given that Julius Biggs, the owner of America’s Sexiest Home Videos, had stolen the floppies of the fourth game causing Larry to become amnesiac.

Williams’ vision for Sierra On-Line had always been, given the continuous advancement in technology, to move its interactive products ever closer to what Hollywood was able to deliver. In 1989 Sierra opened up a new Creative Director position, hoping to bring in someone from the industry to aid in the work towards minimizing the gap between games and movies while still upkeeping a certain quality level across the company’s now many projects.

Sierra reached out to Bill Davis and offered him the new position. Davis accepted and joined the company in July of 1989, bringing with him an impressive resume, having designed, directed, and co-directed more than 150 animated television commercials for some of the leading companies in the US, work that had earned him numerous awards, including an Emmy. Becoming head of the art and music department at Sierra not only fulfilled Davis’ many-year dream of putting the big city life in the rearview mirror but also as an opportunity for him to take art and animation in new and interesting directions.

With the move to 256 colors, graphics could now be rendered much more realistic, something Williams was very keen on, nonetheless Davis, rightfully so, made a deliberate decision to adopt a more abstract art style for the game. He believed that a realistic style would fundamentally alter the game’s essence. Instead, Davis drew inspiration from Cubism, a style characterized by fragmented and geometric forms. The art style chosen by Davis proved to be a fitting match for the game’s overall aesthetic. Backgrounds were hand-painted and then scanned into the computer. The depiction of Larry was very much based upon earlier design work done for the packaging and fitted very well with the overall art style portrayed.

Leisure Suit Larry 5 Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work was released for the IBM/PC, Atari ST, and Amiga on the 7th of September 1991

In an effort to appeal to a wider audience and possibly emulate the success of games from companies like Lucasfilm Games, the difficulty level was significantly reduced compared to earlier titles in the series and the game could be completed even if players neglected certain items and puzzles, and without encountering death scenes. The departure from the traditional Sierra adventure game formula was seen as out of character for the series. Sierra and the Leisure Suit Larry 5 team aimed to capture the enjoyable and challenging aspects of other games but unintentionally neglected the elements that made a Sierra adventure a Sierra adventure.

For many devoted fans, the absence of death scenes in Leisure Suit Larry 5 was disappointing. Despite being a source of frustration at times, these scenes were known for their humorous and spectacular nature and had become an integral part of the overall Sierra adventure game experience.

Leisure Suit Larry was ready for the new decade with 256 colors and a point-and-click interface. The new more abstract art style fitted the game and its character extremely well. Creative Director Bill Davis really understood how art and style emphasized and conveyed a product and its personality.
While the game on the outside looked amazing, struggles to adapt to the new era and customers’ expectations show throughout the game. The multi-player approach while interesting adds no real interaction or intertwining between the two stories.
A talkie version, which also would incorporate a studio audience that would randomly laugh at various lines, was discussed but never put into production

Lowe’s decision to skip Leisure Suit Larry 4 and jump straight to number five was not only needed for him to continue the saga but also proved a strategic move that generated significant buzz and publicity. To this day, the missing Leisure Suit Larry 4 is an ongoing subject for discussion and conspiracies.

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work sold around 250,000 copies, keeping in line with the sales figures of the earlier titles. But as the consumer market continued to grow and evolve, indications of a shifting and more competitive landscape were beginning to emerge. The expectation was that new titles should surpass the sales of earlier ones, given the larger potential customer pool.

During 1990 and 1991, Sierra began work on SCI1 VGA remakes of all its original major adventure titles. The company had always offered a great variety of titles from its back catalog and now with a handful of years of technological advancement, modern remakes would not only target fans of the originals but also newcomers to the series.

While an original title could require $500.000 or more to develop, converting older successful titles, and bringing them up to modern standards was only a tenth of that. The opening title in the King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, and Leisure Suit Larry series all received a modern SCI1 makeover.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizard was updated to 256 color graphics, a stereo music soundtrack, and a point-and-click interface using the same art style as Leisure Suit Larry 5. The remake played nearly identically to the original though some text was changed to mirror current 1991 events.

Despite being cheaper to produce the remakes still required skilled labor and resources, and with consumers primarily looking forward and not backward, the titles never gained enough traction to become a viable venture. In 1992 it was decided that no further updates from the company’s back catalog of adventure games were to be produced. 

The remake of the original Leisure Suit Larry was released in the summer of 1991, only a few months prior to the release of Leisure Suit Larry 5, creating excitement for the upcoming release.
For a brief period of time, the remake was sold in the original pink slipcase (left) before it was released in a newly designed box (right)

The VGA remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards played very true to the original 1987 title. The art style, directed by Bill Davis, was similar to that used in the Larry 5 and fitted the game very well

In 1992, before continuing the tale of Larry Laffer, Lowe, and Josh Mandel got together to write and design a new humoristic title that would tap into the ever-popular Western theme. Mandel, who had joined Sierra in 1990, was appointed as a junior designer and project manager and assembled a team while Lowe, from his home, developed the story and overall design. The two ended up mix-matching their ideas into a finished story and game, loaded with humor and charm.

Freddy Pharkas was released in 1993 on floppy disks (left). In 1994 a CD-ROM version with voice-over and CD-quality music was released (right).
I’ve earlier written a short article on Freddy Pharkas, which can be found here.

Following the completion of Freddy Pharkas, Lowe began working on the design document for the next installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series. As game expectations and ambitions grew, so did the need for more resources and larger development teams. To meet these requirements and streamline production, Williams agreed to allow Lowe to set up a small office in Fresno.
While development typically would start in December or early January, to ensure games got out in time for the all-important Christmas season, with the new office being renovated and a team of local residents needed to be assembled, development lost valuable time and didn’t get going until February of 1993.

Lowe had over the last three titles tried building upon the original concept with more intricate stories and plot designs all while trying to adapt to the advancement in technology, all of which had somewhat sidetracked the series from what initially had made the first game unique and enjoyable. The fourth title had proved a valuable learning lesson and now with a much better understanding of how to design a game around the point-and-click interface, Lowe went back to the roots, to try and capture the spirit of the original 1987 title and portray its gameplay in an up-to-date manner.

Having the team assembled in one place and with Lowe yet again overseeing the production resulted in a much better product than the previous title. Passionate Patti, the playable character introduced in the third title and who never really contributed much to the concept, was dropped. Larry could yet again roam freely, now at the fabulous La Costa Lotta health resort. Seducing, or at least trying to seduce beautiful women over the course of 4 days, without committing to a higher level plot or story.

During development, Sierra’s internal development team was scrambling to complete a new 32-bit version of the SCI framework, allowing for high-resolution Super VGA graphics. While the internal team had promised the new framework, SCI2 would be ready in time for Christmas.
With a delayed start and a certain risk the new interpreter wouldn’t be completed in time, Lowe opted to maintain development in SCI1. The team proceeded to create the artwork in SVGA resolution and applied downscaled versions for SCI1. This resulted in an SVGA version fairly quickly could be assembled when the SCI2 framework was ready.
Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape up or Slip Out was released in late Autumn of 1993 and succeeded in everything the previous title had failed on. The puzzles were better, the writing was better and the premise, to seduce as many women as possible, was back to much acclaim from fans of the series.

Leisure Suit Larry 6 Shape Up or Slip Out, the fifth installment in the series, was released on floppies in late autumn of 1993 (left). Over the following months, the team completed an upgraded version with SVGA graphics and voiceover, released on CD-ROM in the Spring of 1994 (right)

Following the floppy release, Lowe and his team adopted the new SCI2 framework. Within a few months, they managed to not only convert Leisure Suit Larry 6 to SVGA but also add a quite excellent full voiceover along with some changes to the interface.

Leisure Suit Larry 6 was a major upgrade, in every aspect, from the previous title. The writing was better, the humor was better, and the women were even more beautiful. The game returned to the structure of the original 1987 title, allowing for a confined but sandbox-like game. It used the same art style as earlier but with a bit of added funkyíness.
With the 1994 CD-ROM release, Larry spoke for the first time and it felt and sounded just right

By 1993, Sierra On-Line had grown to a size that presented challenges in attracting senior personnel to the small town of Oakhurst. As a result, the company made the decision to relocate its headquarters and most of the key administrative staff to the Seattle area. After the completion of Leisure Suit Larry 6, Lowe left Oakhurst for Seattle where he together with professional musician and producer, Mark Seibert, assembled a team for a new non-mature adventure game, designed to be enjoyed by parents and kids as a shared experience. Torin’s Passage was completed and released on Halloween in 1995, for the IBM/PC and the Macintosh.

Torin’s Passage, released in 1995, was a break from the adult-themed Leisure Suit Larry games. The game was intended to be the first in a series of five games but due to relatively small sales figures, combined with both Sierra and the consumer market heading in new directions, the plan was abandoned

The majority of the team from Torin’s Passage would remain together and move on to the development of Lowe’s 6th Leisure Suit Larry game. Now, with a decade of Larry and adventure game experience, Lowe finally felt he knew what he was doing. The road had been an experiment in not only writing, storytelling, and design but in production and technology as well.

Initially, the team discussed the possibility of taking advantage of the newest technology by employing full-motion video with live-action actors shot on bluescreen but quickly realized the whole universe only had worked because it was presented using technology not able to deliver photorealistic graphics, Larry and his universe was a cartoon a needed to be treated like it. Turning to video could rather easily turn a mature but innocent concept into a completely different beast and the team opted to use the same cartoon style used in Torin’s Passage.

Throughout development everybody on the team could chip in with ideas and weekly meetings were held to make sure everybody was on the same page, resulting in better writing and more spicy dialogues and humor. Combining Lowe’s accumulated experience and having a well-assembled team led to what most would consider the best title in the series.

Leisure Suit Larry Love for Sail was released in 1996 and became Al Lowe’s last original Leisure Suit Larry title. By many regarded as the best in the series.
The franchise would eventually continue but without Lowe’s involvement, needless to say, what followed years later was disastrous.
It would take another 20 years before Larry Laffer yet again had his own game

Leisure Suit Larry Love for Sail when released in 1996 was the first title in the series to receive a Mature ESRB rating, not only was the writing and dialogues riskier but it also showed more adult imagery than earlier titles.

It was received with mixed reviews, the time had clearly moved on from ’70s leisure suits and sexual innuendo content and humor. Not only were new genres capturing the desire of gamers everywhere, but adventure games, in the classical sense, were being overtaken by new concepts.

In September of 1993, the Miller brother’s Myst had been released to massive commercial success. Over the next five years, the game continued to set new metrics for AAA titles in the ’90s. By 1998 the title had sold almost 4 million copies, becoming the best-selling computer game in the US.

Prior to the release of Leisure Suit Larry Love for Sail, Lowe’s saga, combined, had surpassed 2 million sold copies, Love for Sail would go on to sell around 280.000 copies, very much in line with earlier titles but too small a number for a flagship title in the mid-’90s and far from enough to cover the millions of dollars spent on development and manufacturing.

Leisure Suit Larry Love for Sail received a Mature ESBR rating when released in 1996.
While all earlier titles had been limited visually to contemporary technology, the new hi-res cartoon style was probably the only way to rightfully go.
The game reintroduced a simple text parser for a few actions, a throwback to the titles of the ’80s, did it make sense, not really

In the next part, we’ll look at the time following Love for Sail, the Leisure Suit Larry compilations, spinoffs, and modern takes on the universe.

While all of my items are sealed I had the opportunity to borrow a few of my brother’s open copies

Sources: Allow.com, Wikipedia, The Sierra Adventure by Shawn Mills, MEL Magazine, Sierra News Magazine spring 1990, IGN, Ralph Roberts…