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Leisure Suit Larry to Exist in 2009

Posted by Bob Mackey

In a move that will delight dozens and leave millions feeling completely ambivalent, CodeMasters announced over the weekend that they would publish Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust for the XBox 360, PS3, and PC this April (thanks Big Download). The title fell into what can best be described as a mericful limbo during the Activision-Blizzard merger, but most people were justifiably more concerned with the future of Ghostbusters than playing as the progeny of a washed-up PC adventure gaming celebrity. With a main character who doesn't even wear the titular leisure suit (how many people still know what the hell this is and what it signifies) and looks like he fell out of an anime, Box Office Bust is sure to garner attention from no one except old-school Larry fans who'd love nothing more than to see this game wiped from existence.

The continued existence of the Leisure Suit Larry games has always been more than a little inexplicable to me--sort of like when Uwe Boll makes movies based on properties about half a decade after they've peaked. To be completely honest, most of the Larry games--as with nearly the entire Sierra catalog--are nigh unplayable today, so it's not like a re-release of the oldies will bring gamers screaming back to the franchise. I may be a LucasArts adventure gaming brat, but there's something evil about those Sierra adventure games, almost as if the designers have seething contempt for you from the second you start playing.

I'm sure a company like TellTale could make a worthy Larry adventure that's tolerable to our modern gaming tastes, but until then, we're going to get confused hybrids like Box Office Bust and Magna Cum Laude--which haven't even been touched by Larry creator/mastermind Al Lowe. I've never been the biggest fan of Lowe's humor, but it seems odd that these modern Larry games don't throw the old dude a bone and let him come back to the series that made him famous--to nerds, anyway.

If you're the least bit curious about the Larry series, the amazing Hardcore Gaming 101 has an extremely-comprehensive retrospective on the franchise. It's definitely worth reading.

Related Links:

Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
LucasArts Classics On Nintendo DS?


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Comments

Jackson Landers said:

WHAT!?!?! Go ahead and trash the LSL series, but your insults directed towards classic Sierra adventure games in general lack any sort of foundation (you didn't make the slightest effort to explain or substantiate your statements) and just make you sound like an ass.

I play current games, like Grand Theft Auto and such, but does anyone really go back and play GTA 1 for fun nowadays? Nope. But my 5 year old daughter just finished the first couple of 'Quest for Glory' games and is well into 'Kings Quest 4,' which came out when I was something like 9 years old. Most of Sierra's back catalog is just as 'playable' today as it was when it was first released.

Sierra literally invented the genre of graphical adventure games. If actual storytelling and problem solving was too much for you to handle then maybe you should have stuck with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

February 26, 2009 4:05 PM

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About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

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