Game 86: Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X - Introduction (1992)

Infocom struck me as the adventure game equivalent to what Nokia were in the mobile phone world before smartphones became a thing. When graphics came along, Infocom seemed secure in being the best at the text parser adventure game rather than investing in all the fancy GUI and features.

Well, Infocom was bought by/merged with Activision in 1986, effectively shut down in 1989 and repurposed as a brand name for re-releases of old games in 1992. According to Mobygames, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 was the last game showing Infocom as developer, though Infocom was just a name at that point.

Steve Meretzky, after Infocom's demise, had been freelancing, largely with Legend Entertainment, as we've seen in the Spellcasting series. He worked with Activision on this game, which makes sense as the original was one of his babies.

The manual has something to say about Mr. Meretzky

I like the touch of fake animosity where they show Steve's credits for other publishers in a much smaller font.

As with many games of the era, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 was entering the world of digitized speech for the first time – the manual proudly mentions over an hour of recorded speech. The game actually came with some hardware that you plugged into the parallel port (and then plugged into your TV/Monitor/Audio system) for music/sound without having a sound card.

Arguably the most useful of Intercom's 'feelies'

The year is 1956. It's an election year in the United States, and Eisenhower and Nixon are running for re-election; Elvis Presley appears on the Ed Sullivan show, Rock & Roll is starting to shake things up and the Leather Goddesses of Phobos are once again formulating plans to invade the Earth and turn it into their private pleasure world.

The first time, twenty years ago, the Leather Goddesses were thwarted by an ordinary Earthman named Zarmen, who nobody believed.

Earth scientists suspect the existence of a tenth planet in the Solar System, called Planet X. As it turns out, Planet X is inhabited by a peaceful and technologically advanced society who are pawns in the Leather Goddesses' gameplan.

And on this night in 1956, a lone spacecraft crashes on the outskirts of town...

Before getting past the preface, it's worth pointing out that the existence of a tenth planet is unlikely seeing as we actually lost the ninth planet in 2006 when Pluto was found to not be doing its duty and was therefore no longer worthy of being called a planet. And even if there was a planet X, the 1956 scientists can't find it because it actually won't be discovered until the 24th and a half century...

...by Duck Dodgers

You have an inventory box in the bottom left corner, where you keep items and can use them on the environment.

When you talk to people icons on the left indicate the subjects you can talk about.

One of the titular 'Gas Pump Girls'

The manual contains a section on 'radiointeractive fiction' where it describes an adventure game as if this is the first adventure game ever made and these developers invented the concept of puzzle solving because they call it something different – weird.

One thing that makes me very happy is this part of the manual...

“Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 has been specifically designed so that you can never paint yourself into a corner. You won't get killed, and you can't create a situation that necessitates quitting and restarting the game from the beginning.”

Thank you game. No... seriously... thank you!

I'm very glad to see other companies are starting to follow Monkey Island's lead on this one.

The save game screen is a novel one -

You don't get to name your own saves, but you have 20 slots. I wouldn't be surprised if the save names are involved in a puzzle at some point so I might as well list them here:

1. Looking for My Baby
2. My Baby Done Left Me
3. Stuck on Earth
4. The Key to My Baby's Heart
5. I Can't Get No Radiation
6. We're Searchin' Around
7. P.I. Blues
8. Everybody's Mad at Me
9. Gotta Get Off This Planet
10. 186,281 Miles from Earth
11. My Baby From Planet X
12. Bad Moon Horizon
13. Locked In Your Heart
14. Evil Women
15. My Home Planet
16. Gotta Get That Thing
17. Need That Other Thing Too
18. I'm Hungry Baby
19. Heal Me Baby
20. Back on Earth Again

Preface to the Preface

The game's opening cutscene shows me highlights of my adventure in the previous game.






So, it seems the character I played in the original game was canonically a man (not surprising) whose name was Zarmen (first name or surname, I'm not sure) who ended up having a son who's in this game (perhaps Zeke, one of the possible protagonists of this sequel)

I at first thought it might be possible the character in question isn't me, but Trent and that Trent Zarmen's son will be involved in this game. But on reflection, I recall Trent telling me he came from Alaska, while I definitely started the game in Joe's Bar in Upper Sandusky.

Who Will I Be?


This B-movie looking, small-desert-town, pulp-fictiony, things-crashing-from-space thing is sounding eerily familiar... why do I feel I've done this before... and before that...

As for the game, as soon as it starts I'm given the option of who to play with.

I'm including a poll along with this post as part of Adventure Gamer's patented ChoiceClicker (TM) technology so YOU can decide who I play with. The poll should be at the top left of your screen.

Here's what the characters have to say when I hover the cursor over them...

• Lydia: "Greetings. I am Lydia Sandler of Earth"
• Zeke: "I fix cars, I hunt rattlesnakes, I watch shooting stars... I drink bourbon"
• Barth: "I'm just an ordinary pulsating inconvenience" (I at first thought he was saying ball-breaking instead of pulsating - his alien accent and the background music combined to made it unclear)

I'll be playing as all three for comparison purposes and posting interesting differences as I go, but the poll results will determine who I am for the main playthrough. So get ChoiceClicking (TM).

And don't forget to get your score guesses and any possible bets in. Here goes...