Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! (1993): Cracking the Code

by AlexI’ve done it. After this play session, which had me thinking about ways to inadvertently upset The Adventurers Guild’s moderators and readership how to solve an adventure game’s puzzles long after my sessions ended, I finally understood what Leisure Suit Larry 6 is all about—this:This screenshot right here is the pulsating heart (or something else) of the entire Larry series. Pixelated titillation (pixelation?). Some may call it “light-hearted” or “all in good fun.” Others may call it “prurient” and “proof of the corrupting influence of video games on the citizenry of the world, particularly the youth” but if you’re letting kids play a game that’s clearly marked as being distinctly not for kids, I don’t know what to tell you. All I know is that I, a full-grown man, get nothing from this game save for a few laughs and the fun of solving some pretty decent adventure game puzzles.

I’ve figured out the rhythm of this game: Larry wanders around La Costa Lotta, finding various women who need something. They will give Larry what he needs (you know what that is) in exchange for that item. Larry manages to find the item, provides it to the lady, and then hilarity (?) ensues resulting in Larry’s humiliation, Larry gets an item at the end, and then gives these items to Shamara. Who is Shamara? Ah, for that, you’ll have to read on and see where I totally missed something pretty basic during one of my earlier sessions (this one, to be exact).

But first, a note about game design.

The design of Leisure Suit Larry 6 really works well. I think Al Lowe was spot-on when he wrote in the manual that he wanted to “[i]n 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.” He did a great job with this.

I liken this sort of design to a tabletop role-playing game. I’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons & Dragons with my son, and the best adventures I’ve found are the ones which take a location-based approach: they give the DM—and by extension, the player—a map with a bunch of locations on it, and the player can choose which locations to go to when, and each location contains a bunch of stuff to do. Maybe they’re all related to an overarching story or goal. Maybe they’re all side-quests. Maybe they lead to more adventures. Either way, the fun comes from giving the player agency. I’ve found the D&D 5th edition’s 2014 Starter Set’s adventure, The Lost Mine of Phandelver, to be an excellent exemplar of this philosophy.Now, in video games, the ability to totally improvise a brand-new quest is limited, but Leisure Suit Larry 6 does a fine job given the limitations of the art form, especially as they existed in 1993. It’s no Elder Scrolls title, and yes, the player is railroaded to a degree, but it feels like the player has agency, which is something I commend Al for. Many other adventure games of this era do this well: the Quest for Glory and Monkey Island series are obvious examples, but do those games let you urinate on, in, or around things? Nope. Do they recycle jokes to the degree that I do in my post? Actually, yes.

Moving on.

I ended last session having just picked up a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on the beach, and then before firing up the game again kept thinking about two outstanding puzzles: (1) How to use the dumbwaiter once Larry shoves himself inside, and (2) how to trick Daryl into letting me take his handcuffs, which are the item Thunderbird is waiting for. I decided to tackle the dumbwaiter first, but not before using my brand-new ice bucket to snag some ice cubes from the machine outside of Larry’s room (13 points). So now I have cold champagne, but no one to drink it with.

Back in the kitchen, I cram Larry into the dumbwaiter again and try other items, like the dental floss, to push the button. Maybe Larry would tie it around the button or something? Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking either.

It turns out the answer is nowhere near as complicated. In fact, all you have to do is . . . click “Hand” on the button a second time. Larry reaches out, presses it, gets his arm caught, presses it again, gets his nose caught . . .. . . pulls it out (huh huh), and then the dumbwaiter whisks Larry up, up, up, and away to . . .

Now we know what kind of socks Larry wears.

. . . a swanky penthouse apartment.Where have we seen this before?

Oh yeah.

So here we have one of many puzzles I just totally whiffed on the first few times playing Larry 6. I’m sure many of you in the comments were screaming at me, things like “No, just click the button again!” and “Why are you such an insensitive jerk?” To which I answer: I can’t hear you no matter how loudly you yell. Computers don’t work like that.

There’s nothing to pick up in these fancy digs, just an elevator that I later confirm goes back to just outside Larry’s room, a private, locked door I can’t go through to the north, and an exit to the west. Heading west takes me to a room with an indoor firepit and a woman sitting on a balcony. She’s cross-legged and topless, and according to Larry she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

See?

She is Shamara Payne, and is basically the woman of Larry’s dreams.Talking to her (4 points) gets Larry to learn her life story, after trying out some lame lines and lying about being a dumbwaiter repair man or something: Shamara was a high-powered executive type who one day felt like her life lacked meaning. So she decided to move to the island upon which La Costa Lotta is built, “to live a Spartan life of contemplation and thought, living off room service and New Age music” until she can fathom her “meaningless life.” And, presumably, sleep with Larry. Yes, I made that last part up, but I’m pretty sure Shamara is the game’s “goal”: Larry’s always trying to find true love, after all, not just a meaningless succession of one-night stands (though I’m sure Larry wouldn’t mind that).

On a lark, because this is an adventure game and you click everything on everything (even Larry’s zipper, though he comments he doesn’t want to screw things up with Shamara), I try giving her the bracelet Burgundy left behind in the shower . . . and she accepts it (20 points)! Shamara goes on an extremely long-winded rant about what the bracelet truly represents, and that Larry is speaking to her symbolically to get her to understand the meaning of life, man.It's pretty funny, especially with Larry being like “Uh, yeah, exactly,” the ignorant fool perceived to be wise by a seeker of wisdom. I’m not going to reproduce it all here though because it would be several walls of text long, and if you want that you can just go to Reddit or something.

I also give Shamara the orchid Larry got for enduring Rose’s colonic (20 points), and get a similar spiel. I then try the champagne, but Shamara says she’s not ready to drink it yet. Other items don’t do anything, except for the lamp, with Shamara commenting that there used to be a lot of whaling on the island. Interesting. This makes me think about oil. I have a gross idea, that I’ll need to get oil removed via the cellulite drainage machine to fill the lamp, but that’s disgusting. A Larry game would never stoop to that level, would it?

Nope, nothing but pure class here, yes sir.

Fair enough! Now let’s get out of here and work on that handcuff puzzle. I’m pretty sure there was a video camera somewhere. I had the idea of doing something with the camera, preferably involving naked women, as a way to distract Daryl. Maybe with the brochure? I thought maybe Larry could hold it up to a video camera, tape it up there, and then go snag the cuffs while Daryl was busy.

It turned out that there was a camera: in the mud-bath room. This is a pretty odd place to have CCTV, and makes me wonder about what kind of place La Costa Lotta is anyway (spoiler: ‘tis a silly place).Great! I try using the brochure on the camera, and I get an odd message: “While that might help, it won’t loosen that tight bolt like a wrench.” Ah, okay! So the wrench has another purpose here. The problem is, there are those plants in the way of the staircase-looking architectural feature, so I just use the “Hand” to move them (5 points) so Larry can walk up and adjust the camera with the wrench so it’s pointing through the vent into the women’s locker room (12 points). This is like an 80’s movie, Porky’s or something, or maybe Revenge of the Nerds (which does NOT hold up), but anything to get some handcuffs to give to a weightlifting lady so she’ll sleep with Larry.Before I go to visit Daryl in the guard hut, I ponder the power cord Larry stripped the wire on and then plugged in. I try picking it up, and think about another puzzle I’d been thinking about during my time away from the game. Can Larry just zap that locked door? Well, picking up the cord puts it in Larry’s inventory, but I paid better attention to the screen and noticed Larry was holding the cord. So I clicked it on the locked door, and, yup, I fried the electronic lock until the door opened (12 points). I wonder what wonderful wonders are in store! Wunderbar!Why, it’s La Costa Lotta’s Electroshock Exercise Room! And it kind of sucks! There’s a tanning bed on the upper-left wall, a bunch of bottles I can’t take in a desk I can’t open on the lower-left, a table beneath a mass of cables I can’t lie on in the center, and a machine on the right I can’t do anything with. The game says that “everything is turned off until the attendant returns.” Attendant? Is that Gary? I still don’t know. I’ll elide past the times I spend fruitlessly clicking in this room, coming back wearing nothing but a towel, and getting nowhere. Enough of this room! We’ve got handcuffs to filch!

Filched (15 points)

Thunderbird is appropriately enthused by my gift of handcuffs (15 points) that she invites Larry back to her room . . . except she doesn’t tell him which one.It doesn’t matter though, because all you have to do is knock on every door in the resort’s first-floor hallways until you find the one that either doesn’t open or doesn’t give you a funny (or “funny” depending on your mood/maturity level) message, and it’s hers (10 points). And so begins yet another humiliation sequence for Larry, this one involving Thunderbird doffing her dress to reveal a S&M outfit, putting a dog collar around Larry’s neck (without his consent) and whipping him for a good long while (without his consent) (20 points). Larry sure gets taken advantage of in this place, doesn’t he?I mean, I guess it’s safe sex because nobody got any of the wet stuff on them, but sheesh!

Larry wakes up the next morning, bruised and battered but alive. He still has the dog collar, and check it out! It comes with a gigantic diamond!After plucking this highly valuable jewel from the collar (10 points) I promptly go give it to Shamara (20 points), and cross another few puzzles off my list. The next one I tackle has been driving me crazy for a while: how do I get a bathing suit? Well, it turns out I don’t find one; I make one. And all it took was a clue from Billy Dee the lifeguard.

I try clicking everything on him, brute-forcing my way to something, and when I click the dental floss on him, he says the following:I take this to be a clue! Larry can . . . construct a bathing suit out of dental floss and . . . what else?

I don’t know. I wonder if I can wear the sunglasses, or do anything with them and the tiny cloth they came with. You know, I’m by the pool, I figure the items I picked up in this area might be used here. For some reason, I decide to wash the sunglasses with the cloth, thinking that was a puzzle, only for Larry to muse:I look at the cloth in my inventory again, prompting Larry to further ponder its use:It clicks, finally: I use the dental floss with the tiny swatch of cloth and . . .. . . craft my own bathing suit (20 points). Crafting items in a video game! This is like two decades before Skyrim. Is this a video game first? Did Leisure Suit Larry 6 pioneer a game mechanic that would become a mainstay a few generations hence? Is Al Lowe a prophet or a genius? Both?

All I know is that after wearing the bathing suit (12 points), Larry can finally pee in the game’s elusive fifth spot.Yeah, Al is definitely a genius.

While wearing the bathing suit, Larry can’t leave the pool area (he changes between swimsuit and leisure suit in the dark-colored bushes on the pool’s south end), but the reason I wanted a swimsuit was to float on the giant beaver to the pool’s aquatic bar. There’s a fine-looking young lass in a green bikini Larry wants to get close to, and another woman in red.

At least I thought it was a woman in red. It’s a man, actually, and not just any man: it’s the annoying loudmouth from Lefty’s bar in the first Leisure Suit Larry. Of all the recurring characters, it had to be this guy?It’s Sierra co-founder Ken Williams, and if you keep talking to him, he has an endless parade of unintelligible stories, incomprehensible one-liners, and bad jokes, just like I put in my posts just like he did in the first game.

Like so.

I appreciate the callback, and I appreciate the balls to repeatedly make fun of your boss in your games. Of course, Ken was likely on board, and in everything I’ve read about him he seems like a really cool guy and decent human being, and a great man to work for . . . except for that one big bad business decision that ruined Sierra. To be fair, he was lied to. I recommend you read Ken’s 2020 book Not All Fairytales Have Happy Endings: The Rise and Fall of Sierra On-Line for more on that.

Enough about Ken, let’s talk about Larry! The woman in the green bikini won’t talk to Larry unless he can get her a drink (no, you can’t use the champagne). To get a drink, Larry has to get the bartender’s attention. To get the bartender’s attention you must, as Ken said, “slap your tail.” Clicking “Hand” on the tail of Larry’s float lets him slap it on the water, bringing the bartender up to the surface.

Amazing that Larry doesn’t hit on her.

Larry can’t get a drink without showing ID. Cav’s badge, obviously, doesn’t work. I chew on this puzzle a bit, wondering if I have to somehow get a fake photo to put into Cav’s badge, but then I realize I’m at what’s basically a hotel, and at hotels very often you use your room key for everything. This works (10 points), and Larry is able to order a weird non-alcoholic beverage from the bar below and give it to the woman in green, thus sparking a conversation.

Yeah, I thought there was a serious flaw with this particular business model.

The woman’s name is Merrilly Lowe (no relation?), and she is an adrenaline junkie.Through the course of the conversation, Larry learns that she can only achieve arousal through partaking in extreme sports (2 points). In particular, La Costa Lotta’s management has limited the amount of times she is allowed to jump down from the huge bungee tower due to her B.A. . . .Merrily wishcasts her desire for a key to the bungee tower, which of course gives Larry his next objective. Achieving this is as simple as . . . asking Billy Dee for the key.Key in hand (6 points), Larry is able to go up the tower and jump down (ouch!) . . .. . . but cannot go into the water to give Merrily the key.

I think about this, and notice I have three keys: my room key, the bungee tower key, and the random room key I filched from the return box many moons ago. I wonder if I can channel my inner Police Quest III and make a copy of the key. Once again scanning my odd collection of items, I see the file swiped from Mark the gross plumber. I try various combinations of overlaying the tower key on the random room key, and the file, which is the solution, except freakin’ Eagle-Eye Billy notices and puts a stop to Larry’s woman-pleasing scheme.So (a) I can’t take the key in the water, (b) I can’t leave this area with the bungee key, and (c) I can’t make a copy of the key because Billy Dee will see me. It becomes obvious that I have to go up onto the tower and make my copy away from Billy Dee’s prying eyes (30 points).Of course, Larry has to dive down, which is fine because this is a video game and it’s not my belly hurting from a 50-plus foot (that’s 15.24 meters for my non-American readers) so I don’t care. All that matters is that I can give the tower key copy to Merrily (15 points), who is so thrilled she and Larry agree to rendezvous by the tower that night for a little up n’ down action. That’s a bungie jumping reference, you sicko.I’m going to take a brief interlude to talk about another game design choice I think helps this game be slightly easier than it could otherwise be: when an item no longer has any use, it’s removed from your inventory. So, for example, the file—gone. The wrench, however . . . not. Ditto Cav’s badge. So my guess is that I’ll have to use both for something else that is not readily apparent.

Anyway, do you think Larry will finally get lucky this time? Ha ha ha! It’s a Larry game. Let me give you a little preview:No, Larry does not.

As seen in this post’s first screenshot, Larry agrees to climb up after Merr to, you know, and then they go to an even higher platform that’s so far up, there are beacons to warn airplanes, and Larry can see the curvature of the Earth.

Flat Earthers BTFO. Suck it, Kyrie Irving!

Larry and Merr are getting hot and heavy. They get into their harnesses and Larry strips down. Before jumping, Merr assures Larry she is not an airhead and whispers words of wisdom in Larry’s ear (20 points) that are so profound they become an inventory item.

It’s like the dream you pluck from the ether in Les Manley, but not in a terrible game!

Larry, being Larry, then trips and falls before he and Merr can get up to any hanky panky, exposing his nakedness to all of La Costa Lotta in the process.Oh Larry (cue laugh track).

We wake up in our room for the third time, once again thoroughly frustrated sexually, though thankfully not forcibly penetrated or otherwise sexually abused. Thank God for small favors, right? The most logical thing to do is give Shamara our words of wisdom (20 points), which nets us another boost in her estimation but not enough to, you know, consummate things. Which stands to reason, because by my count there are still two women we haven’t been humiliated by and received objects from: Char, who needs batteries, and Gammie, who wants the cellulite drainage device fixed.A pervert’s work is never done! I’m referring to Larry, of course.

Except now . . . I’m stuck. I spend a lot of time wandering around accomplishing nothing, in particular trying to fix the cellulite drainage machine. I try getting oil, i.e., cellulite, for my lamp, but there isn’t enough left over in the machine.Still, it’s good to know I’m on the right track. I also try to use the balled-up toilet paper to fix the hole in the hose, but the game informs me it’s not enough. None of my other objects work so I leave and do the adventure game click-a-thon, revisiting every room and clicking everything on everything. This is made non-laborious by the generous pace at which Larry walks using the maximum speed setting.

Nothing works. I think about what I haven’t done. I see Art go by on his surfboard-toilet device and figure I’ll ride to the end of the line just to see what happens.Well, we reached the gate to the employee’s recreation area since this is the way Art was traveling, and he tells me to get off so he can turn around. I do so, but Larry notices that Art is standing around. I talk to Art . . .. . . who tells me he really wants to smoke a cigar during his break but has nothing to light it with. Let me say, I like Art. Anyone who smokes cigars is okay with me.Okay, most people who smoke a cigar are okay with me.

Regardless, I happen to have a match, which Art happily takes (4 points). He then wanders off into the employee’s area, a horrible place where, he informs Larry, there’s nothing but beer, and lots of it. Joke’s on you, sucker: I’ve already been! Of course, I can’t go in while Art is there because something about stolen badges, not being an employee, blah blah. Whatever. All I know is that you left your toilet unguarded, bro.

Yes, I poke around with Art’s strange means of locomotion, positing that the game wouldn’t have put me in this situation otherwise. I am able to open up the toilet, which reveals a rather more complex set of electronics than one would think a humble commode would need. I get that there are smart toilets and what not, but this is ridiculous.

Sheer lunacy.

Of course, this is what powers Art’s device. Because I’m an adventure gamer, I use Mark’s wrench to liberate the power cable from the motor (15 points).

Larry, you so bad!

Art comes back and is understandably pissed off his toilet cannot move. What a strange sentence! Anyway, he goes back under the hood to take a look. Larry offers to help by “Talk”ing to Art, who asks Larry to hold his flashlight (2 points). Ah hah! I stealthily swipe the batteries from the thing you Brits might call a “torch” (20 points) and then return the useless thing to Art once he fixes his toilet.Stay tuned to see how giving these to Char once again results in something bad happening to Larry. Maybe I’ll even get an item that’ll help me solve the game’s final few puzzles, like fixing the cellulite drainage machine! Thanks for hanging in with me here, hope you’re enjoying the posts, and let’s end this game on a strong note! I mean, it can’t be any worse than Larry 5, can it?
No, it can’t.

OUTSTANDING PUZZLES:

• Fixing the brown water
• Fixing the cellulite drainage machine for Gammie
• Finding a girl to go to the sauna with for Cav
• Finding batteries for Char
• Finding a dress for Shablee
• Finding handcuffs for Thunderbird
• Finding flowers for Rose
• Getting the handcuffs from Daryl
• Get a receipt marked PAID IN FULL to get past Daryl
• Find a bathing suit
• Use the high dive at the pool
• Blow up the beaver float
• Get ice from the ice machine
• Use the elevator
• Use the dumbwaiter
• Find more stuff to urinate on, in, or around
• Get oil for the lamp
• Figure out what to do in the tanning room

Session Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Total Time: 7 hours

Total Points: 774

Inventory: Cav’s badge, brochure, champagne and bucket, hand crème, room key, lamp, orange, ass gasket, toilet paper, towel, damp washcloth, wrench

Things Urinated On, In, or Around: 5 (In the room key return box, behind the taco truck, in the fountain in the towel room, in the toilet in Larry’s room, in the pool)

Things Rammed Up Larry’s Butt: 2 (Rose’s colonic machine, Shablee)