Posts Tagged ‘leisure suit larry’

RPS Feature How Lowe Can They Go?

The Messy Saga Of Replay’s Paul Trowe, As Al Lowe Quits

It has been announced that Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe has left developers Replay. In what is turning into one of the more peculiar and uncomfortable stories, it seems that Lowe has chosen to leave the company at the same time as news of a sex offence by the company’s president, Paul Trowe, has emerged. Trowe was arrested in October last year for showing “harmful materials to a minor”, and plead no contest in April this year. He was guilty of showing a film of gay sex to a 15 year old girl, in a matter that’s as convoluted as it is sad. And it seems this might just be one small aspect of a very bizarre story.

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RPS Feature woman’s orgasm not mentioned

NSFW: F**kQuest: Highway To The Bonerzone?

EXPLODE
Imagine if you were in some sort of hot makeout session with some lithe babe of your dreams, in my case some skinny nerdy bloke with stubble, low voice, and a weird penchant to hate you immediately after sex, and you were just going to proceed to take all your clothes off and make ‘aaah’ noises when Leisure Suit Larry popped into your head.

I’ve been playing Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded all weekend (sadly not a euphemism), and it’s probably the worst heterosexual pants-droughtener you can ever think of, it even scorched my neuropathways with its un-hotness so that all creative wordening left my brain and flew out of the open door into the Brighton sunlight. Frankly all I could think of was not sex which is a miracle, if you’re me. It’s funny that Leisure Suit Larry has this titillating tit rep, when you never see it going in and it’s not even funny. So I harkened back to the only Sierra-esque adventure I ever actually thought was naughty: the silly funny parody game, FuckQuest. (THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK THERE ARE TITS AND WILLIES.) Read the rest of this entry »

RPS Feature Al Lowe, Al Lowe, what's all this then?

Wot I Think: Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded

Note to Americans - it's pronounced 'leisure'. Stop with this 'leeesure' silliness at once.

So, to recap… Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded is a 2013 remake of a 1991 game based on a 1987 game based on a text adventure from 1981 about a guy with his head in the 1970s. Yow. Ordinarily, that would lead to the question “Why?” This time though, the answer is simple: “14,081 Kickstarter backers donated over $650,000 to make it happen, so shut up.”

There’s no arguing with that, really. But are the final results worth the faith?

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Green(light) Means Go: Leisure Suit Larry, More Steamified

Steam Greenlight continues to make dreams come true – you know, assuming those dreams are hoisted atop the shoulders of marketing savvy, inherent appeal to a very specific audience, and sometimes implausibly fortuitous happenings, anyway. Ultimately, though, the results are usually quite nice, and this time around appears to be no different. Ten more games have been granted eternal respite in Valve’s hallowed halls, and only one of them’s technically older than many of the people who voted for it. Aside from Larry’s lizardly remake, standouts include the exquisitely handsome-looking MaK, American McGee’s Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, and the supremely Dungeon-Keeper-y War for the Overworld.

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Prickstarter: Leisure Suit Larry Remake Going Ahead

Finally he has something to smile about.

Leisure Suit Larry’s remake, from Al Lowe and a team of Sierra Online alumni, has finished its Kickstarter. And it won. 13,855 people have taken the half a million target to over $630,000. So we’ll be getting the first Leisure Suit Larry for the third time. This time with swishy new graphics, fully voiced, and without the game trying to kill you every fifteen seconds. Check out our interview with Al Lowe for lots more details.

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RPS Feature Interview

Happy As Larry: Al Lowe On Remaking His Classic Game

Mr Lowe, still making Larry after all these years.

As infamous adventure creator Al Lowe puts it, the Kickstarter craze kicked off by Tim Schafer has, for many, been a lot like getting the band back together. So many names most famous for their games released in the 80s and early 90s are reappearing, some even coming out of retirement, with the promise of crowd-sourced funding. Many, stung by their experiences with publishers in the past, are being wooed back in, and not least among them is Al Lowe. Creator of Leisure Suit Larry, and a programmer on many of the classic Sierra adventures, Lowe hasn’t released a game since 1996, purported to have been in retirement since ’98. He’s popped up here and there since, and continues to send out jokes every day to his loyal mailing list, but at 65 years old he’s officially back, and there’s a Kickstarter to prove it. We spoke to Lowe, and colleague Paul Trowe, a man who began his gaming career at 12, play-testing for Sierra, to find out why they think now is the time to remake the Larry games.

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Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Kickstarters

I need a button on my keyboard that automatically types the word 'kickstarter'

We need to create a master document of old PC gaming franchises and genres and tick off everything that announces a resurrection via Kickstarter. I suspect there’ll be quite a lot of them by this time next year. Next to take a swing at recapturing past glory and the hearts and minds of elder gamers is Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, who wants to rescue his beloved sleazeball from the terrible fate he suffered in recent years. In a project called ‘Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!’ – DYSWHDT – he’s asking for $500,000 for a brand new point’n’click starring the original Larry. Well, a brand new remake at least.
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Cock A Hoot: Leisure Suit Larry HD

I miss the square face.

As Andrew mentions below, HD remakes serve to make games look like your rose-tinted, 1920×1080 memories of them. Trying to play through the original MDK2 now is a tough feat, so having it remade for modern, hi-def eyes is a splendid thing. But the original Leisure Suit Larry? That looks like a pile of pixels even in my most optimistic memory. EGM are reporting that Replay Games and Larry creator Al Lowe have the rights to the games and plan to give them new life. As well as start on some new adventures.

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Al Lowe Loves Leisure Suit Larry Again

I always thought he looked like Richard Nixon

Poor old Leisure Suit Larry has been treated like a common criminal in recent years. Literally a criminal, performing acts of sexual harassment far beyond humour and well into horror. Fortunately, original series creator Al Lowe is returning to hopefully steer the hapless wannabe sex pest back on track, having arranged a rerelease of the first game, Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards for modern devices. Save him, Al. Save him from hell itself.
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Monster Mash: The Grinder

Console monster-bothering shooter The Grinder has just been confirmed for PC, which means you too can (re)murder a metric death-ton of zombies, vampires and werewolves next Halloween. Key features are co-op play between four dudes with specific powers, and being able to mess up rather a lot of enemies at once. A little bit Left 4 Dead and a little bit Gauntlet, by the sound of it – and, judging by the trailer below, a bit of a Clive Barker vibe.
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Old Sierra Adventures: Free, In Browser, Multiplayer

Aren't they clever?

Found via the redoubtable GameSetWatch, this excellent project combines two disparate arms of PC gaming – retro point’n’click adventuring, and the massed peopleage of MMOs. Plus it runs in a browser, so it’s all things to all PC gamers, really. Rejoice!
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RPS Interview: Al Lowe

Anyone who grew up with games in the late 80s and 90s will be so very familiar with the name Al Lowe. Famous, infamous, certainly notorious, he was the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, a series of daft, entertaining, and ever-so-slightly naughty adventure games from Sierra. Lowe’s credits go far beyond Larry, working on stories and coding for many of Sierra’s seminal adventure series, but it will always be for the loveless lounge lizard that he’ll be remembered.

Mr Lowe

However, in recent years the name of Larry has been somewhat spoilt. Sierra revived the series with the execrable Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, an astonishing exercise in bigotry. Lowe had nothing to do with it, his efforts now concentrated on his own website. With the news that Larry is to return once more in Box Office Bust (well, his nephew), we spoke to Al Lowe to get his reaction to the games. We also spoke about developing the original Larry and Police Quest games, the state of the industry then and now, why Lowe is no longer developing games, and some unique insight into the reason a generation grew up solving puzzles.

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A Suitable Boy

This is from the last game. We'd probably get murderised if we stole IGN's exclusive screens of the new one, see.

First details on the new Leisure Suit Larry game, Box Office Bust. It will, it seems, be an adventure game, but will it be more palatable than the remarkably hateful last effort, Magna Cum Laude ( which John “Conan The Barbarian Is Rubbish” Walker scored a vicious 3% to in PC Gamer)? Well, let’s look at the scant evidence we have so far… Read the rest of this entry »