My first experience with Leisure Suit Larry came when I was around 13-years-old. See, a friend of mine had an old Tandy computer complete with an extensive adventure game library. He wasn’t much interested in these games, but I became addicted to the quirky stories and fun puzzles found in games like Kings Quest and Space Quest. Despite my friend’s disdain for these games that required him to read, we would still sink hours playing these games during sleep overs because I actually knew how to solve the puzzles. One day, I received a phone call from my friend demanding that I stay the weekend with him so I can help him beat a game that he found in a box in the garage. As a young adventure game connoisseur, I couldn’t resist the challenge.
When I arrived, my friend immediately threw the game’s box at me and said, “Dude, you get to fuck girls in this game.” The game he tossed into my hands was Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Of course, as a 13-year-old male, I welcomed the idea of playing a game that involved having sex with wanton females in order to win. I mean, I was going to be starting high-school the next year so Leisure Suit Larry was bound to help me out with the ladies. Well, that and “The Grind” on MTV. Hey, those outdated dance moves still help me get my swerve on.
After spending thirty-minutes trying to answer the quiz questions that supposedly provided the game proof that the gamer was over 18, my friend and I were finally treated to the world of Larry Laffer, the game’s lecherous protagonist. We spent the entire weekend attempting to beat the game, and finally did only to find ourselves disappointed with the censored, pixelated sex scene at the end. We would have been able to beat the game the first night, but we got stuck at the beginning trying to figure out how we were going to get Larry to have sex with the girl that lives above the dive-bar without dying of VD as soon as Larry walks outside. Pro Tip: Use the condom. See? Leisure Suit Larry is educational. We also spent a lot of time typing in words and phrases like “masturbate”, “grab boobs” and “drop pants”, which gave us hours of sophomoric entertainment given the of the game’s humorous built-in responses.
This game was all class and all about gettin' ass.
During the years since discovering Leisure Suit Larry, I’ve played the other titles that have since been released on the PC and have become a huge Leisure Suit Larry fan. Well, until Magna Cum Laude hit store shelves. Magna Cum Laude is an abomination, and features none of the witty humor and intriguing puzzles that were abundant in the previous installments. Furthermore, Larry isn’t even the protagonist of the game. The game was a huge flop, universally panned by critics and even flamed by the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, Al Lowe. To make matters worse, Sierra decided to give the go-ahead on a sequel to LSL:MCL and, after year long delay, Codemasters and Team 17 presented the world with one of the worst multiconsole games of all time: Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust. This atrocity is also one of the first games where I managed to unlock all of the achievements. And yes, I did that on purpose.
Unlike other LSL games, Box Office Bust is a platformer – a really, really, really bad platformer. The controls are unresponsive at times, Larry Lovage (Larry Laffer’s nephew) moves slow, the character animations are sloppy and glitchy and the music is forgettable at best. The camera is the worst part of the game, mainly because it doesn’t fucking work most of the time and often gets stuck at awful angles at the most inappropriate of times. The camera is the biggest reason why obtaining all of the achievements in the game is a monstrous pain-in-the-ass despite their simplicity.
The premise of LSL:BOB is simple enough. You take control of Larry Lovage as he takes on odd-jobs at Larry Laffer’s movie studio and eventually have to stop a corporate mogul from taking over the studio. While the game is a “sandbox” of sorts, the bulk of the game takes place in “dreamscapes” where Larry finds himself in a starring role in one of the movies currently being filmed. These “dreamscapes” have absolutely nothing to do with the main story and are some of the most poorly designed stages in video game history. One stage in particular, the “Wild West Dreamscape”, was especially bad during one part of the stage where Larry has to climb up a cliff in order to drop some dynamite on some enemies. The cliff features very narrow ledges that Larry has to slowly cross while staying balanced and outrageous wall-jumping sections. This sounds easy, but the cliff is mostly the same color and figuring where Larry can start climbing and, more importantly, where he’s supposed to climb is impossible without a lot of trial-and-error or using a video walkthrough. To make things worse, the camera gets stuck during the most difficult sections of the cliff and on top of that there’s a timer.
No time for love, Larry. Get back to dodging farts while dressed like a cactus, getting blown up by dynamite and facing one of the worst boss fights ever. Too bad this game isn't a dream and actually exists.
Now for the important stuff: the achievements. LSL:BOB contains 30 achievements for a total of 1000 points. Most of the achievements are the standard “complete this stage,” “complete the game”, etc. I’m fine with story-based achievements, but LSL:BOB has a plethora of achievements that range from unoriginal to downright obnoxious. For example, there are three achievements that require Larry to collect a certain amount of “Larry Awards” statues that are hidden throughout the main studio lot. Collection achievements are not only a time sink, but they are completely unoriginal. Granted, LSL:BOB is fairly light on the collection achievements so I won’t knock it too hard (I’ll save that for Assassin’s Creed). Anyway, collecting these statues is quite a daunting a task especially because the games built-in save feature doesn’t work most of the time, so the best way to go about collecting the statues is to accomplish the task in one sitting. Why? Well, if you don’t then you run the risk of the game forgetting about all of the statues you collected before you saved the game and turned off the system. Nice, huh?
If collecting pointless statues (collecting all of them doesn’t unlock anything) wasn’t enough, the developers of LSL:BOB thought it would be nice to include achievements like “Le Mans” and “Road Tripping” where the gamer is required to spend three hours driving a vehicle and travel a total of 400 miles or more. There is little point in driving vehicles around the lot, mainly because vehicles are only good for beating a handful of missions and the lot is so boring it offers little in terms of exploration. There’s even an achievement called “Carjacker” where the gamer is supposed to “hijack” 50 vehicles. “Hijacking” is a completely useless gameplay feature since there are plenty of parked vehicles to take, and Larry’s sluggish movements make catching up to moving vehicles in order to “hijack” them frustrating. To make matters worse, the “Carjacker” achievement is glitched and sometimes won’t unlock until well after 50 hijackings (I unlocked it at 64).
I’ve just realized that I’ve spent numerous paragraphs describing a Leisure Suit Larry game and have not mentioned the most important element of any LSL title: scoring with babes. Well, dear readers, having sex with women in LSL:BOB is merely a trivial side-task. Sure, LSL:BOB is chock-full of sex jokes and scantily clad women, but there are only a few busty vixens that Larry can take back to his trailer. One would think that nailing these movie studio harlots would be a major part of LSL:BOB’s story or be a requirement, but instead it only unlocks a 40-point achievement called “Mr. Lover-man.” Seriously, this is a fucking Leisure Suit Larry game – boning bimbos should be top priority. No wonder Al Lowe is thrilled that his name isn’t associated with this travesty.
Psst. Hey. Larry. Want to get freaky with these two busty babes? You do? Sorry, not in this game. Have fun wall-jumping, jackass.
In the end, I have no regrets about beating Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust and unlocking all of it’s achievements. The game makes for a great conversation piece, mastering the game’s ridiculous controls has made me more deft at performing complicated wall-jumps in better games and getting all of the achievements felt like an accomplishment given the difficult and frustrating time I had during my playthrough. Also, LSL:BOB is akin to 1970s grindhouse cinema and the 1980s low-budget sex-romps the USA Network used to show late at night; films that were so bad they needed to be watched at least once.
It’s truly unfortunate this game is so bad because it had so much going for it. The game takes place in a movie studio owned by Larry Laffer; the game should have just written itself. The developers also picked up some great voice talent (Jeffery Tambor, Partrick Warburton, Dave Attell, Carmen Elektra) but it was wasted with out-of-synch voiceovers and terrible jokes. It’s sad that future generations won’t get to discover the fun and cleverness of the Al Lowe run of Larry games, and instead will be treated to whatever filth some hack developers create and slap the name “Leisure Suit Larry” on the cover.
