It’s always amazing (and kinda scary) how YouTube‘s algorithm will all of a sudden recommend something for you and, the next thing you know, you’ve spent the next day and a good chunk of the wee hours of the morning going through this rabbit hole of related videos. That happened to me very recently as, all of a sudden, YouTube recommended a video of the Space Quest Historian, a YouTuber I have never seen before, giving his “fair and balanced” take on Police Quest II: The Vengeance. This was an old-school adventure game made by Sierra On-Line and one of my favorite video games when I was a kid. I have a lot of fond memories playing Sierra’s line of adventure games growing up and watching the Space Quest Historian’s hilarious look at it threw me into a pool of nostalgia that I was only so happy to drown in.

You would think this post would be my memories of the Police Quest games, wouldn’t you? Well, I might write about that in a future post because that would be my second favorite Sierra adventure game franchise. What I would like to talk about and reminisce on right now is my actual favorite Sierra adventure game series: the Leisure Suit Larry series.

For the uninitiated, in the Leisure Suit Larry games you play as Larry; Larry Laffer (heh, heh), a forty-something guy who got tired of being a virgin and decided to put on his best leisure polyester leisure suite in the pursuit of finally getting laid. Yes, that’s the plot. You basically play a loser who wants to get it on with the ladies. So, it’s not entirely unlike your real life, isn’t it? All joking aside, despite the odds of a game like this simply devolving into raunchy humor and off-putting jokes, there’s a little more to the games. After all, Sierra wouldn’t have been able to pump out seven official games if there wasn’t something about Leisure Suit Larry, would it?

I guess one of the things that made playing the Leisure Suit Larry games so memorable for me was the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be playing it. Sierra pumped out more family-friendly fare, such as their flagship King’s Quest series as well as the Space Quest games. While games like Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Quest for Glory and Laura Bow franchises would have more mature themes, Leisure Suit Larry was a very adult but immature game! After all, it’s all about a guy who wants to get laid! The first game and third game even forces you to go through a very weird age-verification quiz to prove you’re supposedly old enough to play it! Not that big of a hurdle for a twelve-year old kid who notes things down can’t beat! Besides, some of the questions are easy! I mean, asking what was illegal during prohibition? Even I knew the answer was perversion alcohol back then!

Even though these were adult adventures developed by Sierra, these were still adventure games developed by Sierra. So, there are going to be a lot of ways to die and, honestly, this was part of the fun for me! Some of them can be really stupid but, in retrospect, make a whole lot of sense. Oh, there are going to be the usual “falling to your doom” kind of deaths here but some of them can be really fun and creative, like getting a venereal disease from a prostitute, getting too close to a very overweight and horny female (Hey, it was the late ’80s!), sunbathing for too long so your skin catches on fire and catcalling a gay guy so you walk off into the sunset with him (Hey, it was the early ’90s!).

It certainly helped that the writing was always consistently great. Al Lowe, the man behind the Leisure Suit Larry games, wrote in a lot of gags that really worked for my teen brain. Sure, they were immature but there also was a good amount of groan worthy ones. I particularly remember really long sequence in Leisure Suit Larry III where you have to sit down at a comedy club while a comedian tells a lot of racially charged jokes (you choose the ethnic groups, by the way, so it’s technically your fault!) and it just goes on and on! You don’t have to go through this but, if you want the perfect score, you have to sit down and read through all of them! Some of the jokes were funny but a good number of them were just… groan.

This was also one of the rare times when the games actually got better as the series progressed. While Sierra’s other adventure game franchises’ quality started to dip for various reasons, Al Lowe’s Leisure Suit Larry flourished. It was like he knew exactly what to do to kind of adapt to the times and the new technology.

During the later years when CD technology became more standard, Sierra started to add voice acting and they got Jan Rabson to become the voice of Larry Laffer. And Jan Rabson nailed (pun intended) what Larry was supposed to sound like. He gave Larry this squeaky voice but delivered all the lines with the deliberate overconfident swagger that Larry has. I also have to give a shoutout to Neil Ross who voiced Leisure Suit Larry 6 and 7’s narrator as his banter with Larry Laffer was a big highlight of those games. And it wouldn’t have worked if they didn’t sound right.

It was also during the later years when Sierra was kind of left behind when it came to how to present their adventure games. Pixel art was becoming archaic, at least in their minds, so they tried experimenting on other ways to spruce up their graphics. They tried to go the fully animated route with King’s Quest VII and that didn’t work because they kind of cheaped out on the animations by using the same guys who did the Legend of Zelda CD-I games. Luckily, they ironed things out by the time Leisure Suit Larry 7 came out as the game, despite being low-res, still looks pretty good even by today’s standards.

Speaking of Leisure Suit Larry 7, this is my favorite game of the series. While I do have a lot of fond memories of playing all of the games in one way or another, the seventh game is where I had the most fun as it was the funniest and, well, the raunchiest of the Leisure Suit Larry games. The worst one I would have to say is Leisure Suit Larry 2 as this felt more like a PG game as there was actually very little “adult” situations here. As such, it’s kind of lame.

You may have noticed that I haven’t talked about the Leisure Suit Larry games that came out after Sierra closed down their doors. Well, that’s because I didn’t play them and I have very little inclination to play them. The biggest reason is Al Lowe wasn’t involved with any of them! In fact, Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust are more like spin-off games as they do not feature lovable loser Larry Laffer but rather his nephew. The later ones, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry and Wet Dreams Dry Twice, does have Larry Laffer returning (and Jan Rabson even does his voice here) but, even looking at the trailers back then, the humor just wasn’t clicking for me. So, even though it had potential, I just passed on them.

But the mere fact they keep making new Leisure Suit Larry games is a testament to how good these old Sierra adventure games were and how people do love Larry; Larry Laffer (heh, heh). Despite the Leisure Suit Larry games were supposed to be just for adults, there were a lot of non-adults who grew up playing these games. I know I wasn’t supposed to be playing them but I’m definitely not ashamed to say I love the Leisure Suit Larry games.

Did you play any of the Leisure Suit Larry games while growing up? What was your favorite? Let me know in the comments section below!