Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! (1993): Introduction

So here we are, with Al Lowe’s sixth Leisure Suit Larry game, played by me for your reviewing pleasure here on The Al Lowes Guild The Adventurers Guild. I’ve played this before a long, long time ago, and as you’d expect, it’s a really stupid game.

But fun. And therein lies the dichotomy of Al Lowe, the paradox, if you will, of this complex, multifaceted man, this artist—nay, auteur—a musician, comedian, programmer, and game designer who infuses his games with all of the things that make life worth living . . . that make life life.

Things like horse flatulence.

Al Lowe, finger on the pulse of what binds us all.

You know what you’re getting with an Al Lowe game: puerile humor, lots of sex jokes, insults, more jokes, absurd situations, and generally well-designed puzzles. His games might not be high art, though the graphics can be quite pretty and the music quite good, but his writing tends to be snappy. Some, in fact, may say his skills with a pen are “perfect,” and I don’t use that word lightly. For if a game sets out to make you laugh with lots of boob and dick jokes, and does exactly that in a clever way featuring lots of wordplay, innuendo, and dramatic irony, has that game not done exactly what it promised? Has it not delivered? Are you not entertained?

Al Lowe

In general, the puzzle design in Mr. Lowe’s games is just as good as the presentation. While not always super-challenging, his games are satisfying to overcome and avoid the twisted moon-logic of games by, say, Roberta Williams and her King’s Quest series, or Lowe’s own Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. Of the Al Lowe games I’ve played for this blog, all have been good, though the aforementioned Freddy Pharkas had some puzzles which weren’t intuitive and caused no small level of frustration and consultation of walkthroughs. Leisure Suit Larry 2, which, to be fair, I didn’t play for this blog, likewise had some questionable puzzle design but was on the whole an entertaining game, while Larry 1 and 3 were both tightly designed and, if not terribly difficult, at least highly enjoyable. Larry 5 nailed the comedy part down, but the puzzle aspect was nearly nonexistent. In fact, Larry 5 truly came closest to that misguided ideal of making games “interactive movies”: it was possible to advance and win without doing anything. A disappointment despite the excellent presentation and jokes.

“Excellent” being a relative term, because these are stupid sex jokes that a 13-year-old would be like “Man, that’s dumb.” But I find some of them funny. Go figure.Before I dig into the manual and the game itself, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. Yes, this means we’ll need to talk about comedy. Some people find talking about comedy awful or boring or unnecessary. I disagree. If you are interested in a thing, you want to know how it works. Unfortunately, in our very polarized political climate, things get heated, and while comedy has always been political to a degree, it never felt quite like this.

I mean, this game makes fun of women, men, gays, blacks, whites, straight people, fat people, everyone I can think of. In my playthrough 20 or so years ago, I remember a particular homosexual character who is depicted in a way that would never be allowed now. Sensibilities have changed, and when discussing comedy from a different time, you need to remember that. But still . . .

Ever watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)? I did for the first time around 2011. Remember Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Holly’s landlord, Mr. Yunioshi?Good Lord! I mean, why not just call him “Mr. Ching Chang Chong Ah-So!” and be done with it. For real, it’s that bad. The offensive part isn’t that they got a white man to play an Asian man. The offensive part is . . . I mean, just look at him! Watch the movie! It’s the Asian equivalent of a white actor donning blackface, dressing like an exaggerated version of a gangster rapper, brandishing guns, and calling everybody the N-word. It’s just not funny. It takes a lot to offend me, and that’s when I tend to dislike comedy from any era: when it’s just mean and not funny.

Back to the gay character in Leisure Suit Larry 6: I remember being . . . off-put by him when I played the game back in the day. It seemed a bit much to have the token gay be a flamboyant lisper, although it made some sort of sense in the context of the game given that (a) such a stereotype exists for a reason, (b) I can turn on my TV and find actual gay men who speak in this manner, (c) everyone is a broad stereotype in Larry games, and (d) everyone in Larry games is really, really horny.

The gay character rubbed me the wrong way, though, because it felt too overdone. Have a gay character, make fun of them, whatever—I remember the lesbian character in Larry 6 being funnier and far less offensive—but this just felt mean. And it’s none of that b.s. about comedy “punching up” instead of “punching down”: comedy always has punched down and still does to this very day, so stop kidding yourself. It’s about being funny, being technically competent, delivering the joke well, and revealing a deeper truth underneath the laughter that we can all recognize and relate to.

I’m sure I’ll have more to talk about when I actually start playing the game. I’m sure you will to. In light of this, I will give everyone my solemn pledge:

I, Alex, who reviews games for The Adventurers Guild (formerly The Adventure Gamer), am only reporting what I see in this game and my impressions of it, and in no way, shape, or form intend my write-ups of jokes and situations in this game to offend anybody reading them. Further, I will not add insult to injury by insulting any commentor, and merely ask that you all do the same, for if you do start levying personal insults my way, I will not hesitate to respond in kind.

We good? We good. With that out of the way, let’s get into the manual.

I’m playing the collection I downloaded from GOG.com a quadrillion years ago, so I don’t have the actual, physical thing to get my sweaty hands on (hey, is that an Al Lowe-tier joke?). I like to scour these manuals for hints and get the flavor of a game. I don’t recall Larry 6 having copy protection hidden in the manual, but before starting it’s worth making sure so I don’t do that ass + u + me thing.

Wow, just like the real thing!

Al Lowe begins the manual with an interesting write-up describing his intentions for the game:

“In some ways, a return to the original. With Larry 6, I wanted to provide an area where the player could roam around and see almost anything within the first few minutes of play, and yet provide enough depth of play that the game would challenge most players. No long auto-pilot cartoons. No Passionate Patti to provide political-correctness. No involved heavy plot. Just more babes, more silly situations to humiliate Larry, and more babes. (Did I mention the babes?)”

From my memory of playing Larry 6, I would describe this as accurate. Otherwise, that’s it for the manual besides the technical information of how to install and play, an explanation of the interface, and so on. No codes, no maps, no secrets, no nothing. In one way, that’s a relief, but in another, detailed manuals are one of the things I enjoyed about old adventure and RPG games. C’est la vie, times change, and change is the only constant in life. And as Confucious said, may we live in interesting times.

“That’s cultural appropriation!”

Moving on, let’s boot this thing up. The Sierra logo turns into a multi-frame title screen where Larry drops a heavy barbell on his toe, complete with a digitized yowl of pain.

I’m reasonably certain this copyright notice says 1994 because I’m am playing the later CD-ROM version with improved graphics and the addition of voice acting.

We then get a creatively animated credits sequence showcasing all the various perverts, weirdos, and immature clowns who made this game.

Hey look, it’s Al, who actually plays the saxophone and wrote the Larry theme himself. Hi Al!

The game’s introduction proper starts on muscle beach where Lary likes to go and ogle chicks. What a creep, right? He’s like the character in Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung,” but at least Mr. Laffer here is eyeing grown women with bad intent and not “little girls.”

By the way, “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull is a pretty disgusting song.

Wait, you’re telling me this guy wrote a disgusting song?

You’ll have to forgive the text-free screenshots because I don’t know how to add text boxes until the game actually begins. So I’m going on my recollection of what the narrator said, voice with a dry snideness by Neil Ross. Larry, voiced by Jan Rabson, is perfect, but you can’t hear that through text so it sucks to be you! Check it out on YouTube if you’d like to experience it for yourself.

And so the story beings.

It’s an exceedingly stupid story that harkens back to Larry 2. There, if you remember, Larry ends up on a dating show and somehow wins a cruise.Here, Larry ends up on a sleazy dating show called Stallions, is fed pre-scripted answers which he promptly uses, and is pre-determined to lose, winning the consolation prize of a two-week stay at some sunny health resort called La Costa Lotta.

Prefiguring today’s horrid cultural landscape, the game calls this “embarrassment TV.” It’s so embarrassing, that when some lady named Shallow shows up in her overly huge “Hollywood limo” . . .

“Blah blah blah.” This lady has as shrill a voice as you can imagine.

. . . the three other muscleheads approach, inadvertently dragging Larry with them. However, when they hear what show they’ll be on, they quickly leave, making Larry the odd man out. What a brilliant premise.

I forgot this dumb-dumb’s name, but there’s obviously a Richard Nixon joke. Al Lowe is a Boomer, so if his frame of reference wasn’t Richard Nixon, it was going to be Woodstock.

Each of the ladies up on stage is a literal genius/nuclear physicists type with names like Charli Tan and Charlie Mayne (har har), and Larry ends up forgetting to read the cue cards saying things like “I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat?” but it doesn’t matter because it’s stupid. It’s so stupid, in fact, that even the narrator twice fast-forwards the proceedings to get to the end.

Thank you, Mr. Narrator sir.

And so, very quickly, the game begins. Larry is whisked away by a shoddy and dropped off at La Costa Lotta’s front gate, where he strolls into the lobby and the player assumes god-like control over poor, hapless, horny Mr. Laffer.This is where we’ll pick things up next time. Thanks for reading everyone, and get settled in. I have a feeling this will be a long one.