Live Magazine February Issue February 2014 | Page 28

CLUSIVE IN
EX
When you look at games throughout history that depict sex, few have
managed to do it successfully. One
of the earliest (and greatest) game
series depicting sex was the hilarious Leisure Suit Larry (released
1987) from Al Lowe and Sierra. Nick
from Sticky Trigger caught up with
Al in a recent interview and the two
chatted about sex in gaming,
What compelled you to create Leisure Suit Larry?
I thought that it was time for a game
that was funny and maybe for a
game that treated current day topics
and subject matter and the way that
I did that was updating an old game
that had been around for years
called Soft Porn Adventure. When I
looked at it, it was really out of date
and I made a joke that the plot was
so old it should be wearing a leisure
suit and I got a laugh. And I thought
‘hey, leisure suits must be funny’
and I said ‘you know, the only way
I could remake this game is if you
let me make fun of it... as a parody,
as opposed to really doing it’. And
everybody thought that was a good
idea so I took my first stab at comedy
writing.
Was soft porn adventure more of
a ‘serious’ game?
Yeah it was, it had an odd tone to

it. It had no protagonist, there was
no central character what so ever,
the game talked to you, the player in
phrases like ‘I am your puppet master. Command me and I will do as
you wish’ and stuff like that. It was
basically a ‘serious’ game about a
guy trying to get laid! It just seemed
too whacky to be serious, so using
that same premise I thought well I
should make fun of it! The first thing
I did was come up with the character that a person could relate to on
screen. Someone that you could
play as and think the real breakthrough for me came when I realised
that its difficult to have comedy with
just one voice; that its much easier to
work with a side kick and that’s when
I realised that the narrator could be
the comedian and that Larry could
be the brunt of the jokes . Suddenly
that made it a lot simpler to write the
comedy.
It definitely worked well, particularly in the recent remake - he’s
actually got quite a voice on him
too - the narrator, which worked
brilliantly.
We love that guy! Brad Venable did a
great job in that role!
So what’s the most important aspect with your development time
with Leisure Suit Larry? Was it
the jokes? The puzzles? Or was

al

it offering adults a different kind
of video game to play? From my
mind, Leisure Suit Larry was the
first ever to be a realistic world.
Everything Else was fantasy like
Mario or Zelda.

Yeah, back then games, well... I’m
not sure why I started this sentence
with back then (laughs) because its
the same way today. It’s either stories and spaceships in the galaxy
right? There’s a hole. We’ve dug a
deep rut and seem unable to get out
of it. There are a few exceptions to
the rules, but by far there’s way too
many games that fall back on those
two dimensions.
Even the ‘realistic’ soldier games
are a fantasy of war.
Exactly! But, back to your original question. Because I used the
puzzles and the structure that was
in the original sort porn game, my
challenge was to make the character interesting . First of all, to create a character and give him some
sort of personality and then the
tough part was to make the character loveable in spite of the fact
that he is kinda smarmy and sleazy!
(Laughs). It was a fine line to walk
because I wanted him to be the butt
of the jokes, I wanted him to be not
to bright and to be kinda this, terrible excuse of a ladies man. On the