From what I understand, this is how the depressed peacocks that call themselves 'pick-up artists' think of it as well. Not because it’s made of squares, but because that’s what the game amounts to. I agree that Leisure Suit Larry is not about sex, because almost immediately I started looking at it as a series of blocks I was pushing around. You can put stuff in for shits and gigs to see if the developers anticipated different kinds of smartassery. Text commands give you more freedom to experiment, in some ways. I spent ages trying to open the door because I thought ‘open door’ would be somehow too complicated as an instruction. To my modern sensibilities figuring out text-based controls are kind of a puzzle in themselves. When Larry dies there’s a pretty cool scene where a behind-the-scenes Sierra crew have to put together a new version of him from a production line. I got run over immediately by walking into the street without realising, because when you press an arrow key, Larry will keep walking in that direction until he hits something, or you pick another direction. On one level I understand what people found interesting about it. I booted up the original version rather than the Kickstarted ‘Reloaded’ one, to get that pure, unadulterated Larry experience. When you begin you’re led to believe that Larry, who is 38, desires nothing more in his blocky, pixely heart than to get his end away. The evidence cited for this is usually the ‘hooker’ scene. Forget what your kneejerk reaction is! The original Leisure Suit Larry trilogy is about finding true love!

Or possibly they’re not even really about sex at all, but about the search for something more meaningful. It’s an adult sex comedy adventure game from the 80s, but Larry’s games are “comedies about sex”. Like, I don't care, you can just like it.

I’ve wanted to do this for some time because people, people writing for this very website, no less, have done a lot of work to defend the fact that they like it. So it made sense, in my mind, to play Leisure Suit Larry 1 (aka Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards). Romancing The Code is a regular series (although it's been a while) where Alice Bee writes about the different ways games make us fall in love, without the actual sex bit.Ī couple of weeks ago I was at GDC, surrounded by hundreds of people talking about the present and future of games.

Larry the lounge lizard