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Leisure Suit Larry
- coderdude 15y agoI never played the LSL series but I'm a big fan of the classic adventure games (Space Quest and Full Throttle -- if you've never played them, you've been robbed). Maybe if this works out we'll see some more revivals. This genre in this style was completely lost in the rush to move everything to three dimensions. There are moments and feelings that simply can't be captured by other genres. The fact that they hold the rights and have Al Lowe on board makes this unbelievably cool. Good luck, guys!
- gcp 15y agoFull Throttle I had an interesting OMG moment a while ago realizing that was also one of Tim Schafer's games.
- minikomi 15y agoI think this genre of games is ripe for a comeback on iOS. Just try to avoid having the keyboard pop up all the time and it should be great.. Although discovering the secret commands and hidden jokes by randomly trying words was half the fun of the old Quest titles.
- chubs 15y agoI've started an ios game in the spirit of SQ2, have done a lot of the code, production artwork for a few scenes, and scribbled artwork for all the rest. I'd love to finish it but my designer is too busy to continue.
- eps 15y agoGot any scribbles to share? Sounds really interesting.
- chubs 15y agoHave a look if you're interested: http://lauradesign.com.au/on-fire http://lauradesign.com.au/on-fire http://lauradesign.com.au/to-the-bat-cave http://lauradesign.com.au/to-the-bat-cave http://lauradesign.com.au/what-the-rock-is-that http://lauradesign.com.au/what-the-rock-is-that I've made an objc framework for quest games, ready to go, just need lots of artwork. Maybe we'll finish it one day...
- kennu 15y agoOne interesting fact: Leisure Suit Larry is pretty much directly based on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_Adventure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softporn_Adventure text adventure game. If you try it, you'll find the plot and the surroundings very familiar. Personally I discovered this while reading http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B003PDMKIY http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar... which I recommend to anyone.
- tbsdy 15y agoWow... according to Wikipedia, the women on the box were all employees of On-Line Systems, the precursor to Sierra. One of them is a bookkeeper! I'd be curious as to how the convinced them to pose naked on the box.
- waterlesscloud 15y agoWell, it says one is Roberta Williams, who co-owned the company. And the hot tub.
- motti_s 15y agoTalk about setting an example to your employees...
- _sh 15y agoThe Digital Antiquarian wrote some interesting blog posts on On-Line Systems and Softporn back in February (with screenshots!). This blog is a great read for info on this and other early adventure games and their creators. http://www.filfre.net/2012/02/ http://www.filfre.net/2012/02/
- muyuu 15y agoThe 80s were awesome.
- mahmud 15y agoit was 1981: things were blurry, people were still hangover from the 70s ..
- jaredsohn 15y agoIf you want to play King's Quest I, Police Quest I, Space Quest I or a few other Sierra games legally in your browser (HTML5) right now, go here: http://sarien.net/ http://sarien.net/. The blog says that they used to also have Leisure Suit Larry but had to take it down since Activision had sold the IP. This was posted on Hacker News a couple of months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3591342 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3591342
- jaredsohn 15y agoAlso, various groups have remade Sierra games: Kings Quest I/II/III, Quest For Glory II: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html Space Quest II / Kings Quest III: http://www.infamous-adventures.com/ http://www.infamous-adventures.com/
- thetron 15y agoIf amazing adventure game developers of yesteryear continue to start Kickstarter projects, I am going to end up seriously broke.
- gcb 15y agonow even kickstarters are going for the 'sequel' trap? LSL is dated now. it was fresh when it was made. how much more time they could have put into an ORIGINAL product if they haven't filled the pockets of big-game-studio? hint: to people that actually likes games, a title that sports some well know adaptation is often associated with a bad experience to come. It's often the cheap game made to cater to parents buying xmas gifts without a clue.
- jaredsohn 15y agoThey're remaking the original Leisure Suit Larry games (at least the first one), not creating a sequel (although they said they might also create the nonexistent Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Case Of The Missing Floppies if they are successful.) Also, I don't think these particular games are a good example of games made to cater to parents buying xmas gifts. :) I do agree that the games feel dated though (even if they update them slightly as they suggest.)
- eps 15y agoSpace Quest! Space Quest! Space! Quest! SPACE QUEST!!
- sgt 15y agoI absolutely agree with you. But if they make LSL for now, it'll keep me occupied and happy for a while before we get to meet Roger Wilco again.
- alanbyrne 15y agoOh my word yes please! I am not a "mobile device gamer" in any way, but I would definitely start for Larry or SQ
- bitwize 15y agoOnly if Gary Owens comes out of retirement to narrate Roger's adventures.
- i386 15y agoThe game has no major female characters who aren't hookers. No arguing that LSL has its place in gaming history, but it doesn't have a place in a future that is trying its hardest to remove objectification of women from society. EDIT: The down voting button is not a disagree button. If you disagree, reply!
- andrewfelix 15y agoI have to agree with this. A lot of people are probably remembering the game through rose coloured glasses. It was a great game when we were all kids and got excited at the prospect of seeing a nipple. It's a little disappointing to see immature misogynistic entertainment getting so many upvotes on HN.
- sgt 15y agoOh my, you guys are boring.
- tbsdy 15y agoI know. Respect for women is SUCH a dull way to live your life.
- tbsdy 15y agoYeah, downvote me. Clearly it was sarcasm.
- reitzensteinm 15y agoActually, I think we got that. In general, if you're going to be snarky here, you'd better be witty or intelligent about it. Or, you know, funny.
- tbsdy 15y agoNoted!
- bishnu 15y agoEver wish sometimes you could take money away from Kickstarter projects? LSL is one of those things that should be left in the '80s.
- tybris 15y agoWhy? There are people who might enjoy this. How does this bother you?
- jenne313 15y agoI do - all the time. Kickstarter rejected my application to fund/finish an app for survivors of a certain disease. It was a strong application - I don't think that was the issue - I guess it just wasn't shiny enough for KS to warrant giving it a shot at crowd-sourced funding. It's interesting to watch the evolution of projects that the KS folks deem Kickstarter-worthy. Somehow this LSL sequel was worthy, but an <$30K mobile application to reduce the suffering of a few thousand patients? Guess not.
- sgt 15y agoI just pledged $25. I encourage others do to the same!
- mkramlich 15y agoI wrote an iPhone game that's extremely like Leisure Suit Larry, about a year or two ago. Same spirit and game mechanics. Called "The Adventures of Khaki Pants Pete". Pretty much a nod to LSL, even the name was a tongue-in-cheek reference to it's name. I did it under contract for a dev shop that in turn did it for the company that owns the Klondike Bar. A lot of people said it was pretty fun. I thought it was fun. And I'm old enough to have played LSL version 1. From the LSL Kickstarter project goals: * The freedom to play on mobile devices * A modern point-and-click/touchscreen interface * Updated, ultra-high res graphics * Fully voiced characters * Even more of the humor that’s made Al Lowe a household name…like “Borders” and “Enron”! Khaki Pants Pete did/does all of that, except the voiced characters. Has music and audio feedback effects, but only on-screen text dialogue bubbles. Though pretty funny. I'm not sure if I like or dislike the fact that their KS project has set a goal of raising $500k to fund developing it. I know our/my budget for making Khaki Pants Pete was much much less than that. My slice was much smaller anyway. :) clarification: I did not design the game play or script, but I did design and code the entire game engine from scratch, solo.
- pjeide 15y agoAll of what you have said certainly sounds great for your game. It sounds as though the only thing missing from KPP may have been fully voiced characters. Tough to tell -- but, presuming that were the case, would alone be a drastic difference. Pile on top of that the nostalgia, association with the character and franchise, and every other intrinsic benefit of a genuine over imitation and it becomes a different conversation. *edit to correct acronym
- pellias 15y agoThe KS project is a PC version which i assume will take more to develop than the iPhone game right ? I do not know how much it takes to develop such a game but other games in KS is also asking for similar range (Wasteland 2 got twice the $900k they asked for).
- paines 15y agoWow, sound like my dream job. Hope you had fun and learnt a lot. Any chance for an Android version ?
- adrianwaj 15y agoI'm thinking a film would be better as Larry hits the social networks and stumbles across a plot to spike drinks city-wide, something mixing American Pie, James Bond and Austin Powers - with/without CGI females?
- Shivetya 15y agoSomeone please bring Starflight back. Hell, they could simply use the exact story of the original and its sequel and have two great games. Well provided they don't make it first person :P There are so many great games from the eighties. Many of them had to have original elements and wit because they were so constrained by the machines of that day.
- superrad 15y agoLooks like they ran out of money or are just looking to pocket some free money, considering they announced the project last year : http://www.egmnow.com/articles/exclusive-leisure-suit-larry-returns-in-hd/ http://www.egmnow.com/articles/exclusive-leisure-suit-larry-...
- spwmoni 15y agoFive hundred thousand dollars. Give me a fucking break. Their justification is even more baffling: "I (Paul) just got off the phone with Greg, the producer over at Double Fine and asked him how it was possible to make a full fledged adventure game for $400k when it's costing us $500k to re-make Leisure Suit Larry. He told me that they initially only planned on making a small iOS game with 3 people on the entire team: 1 artist, 1 programmer, and 1 producer. That, plus they already had a game engine they spent millions of dollars making for a previous game whereas we're using the Unity engine and we're starting with the PC English version, which is a huge, huge difference!! The only thing we can re-use is the original design. Everything else we need to create from scratch: characters, environments, animations, engineering, and even sound effects." How is using Baby's First Crossplatform Engine harder than using an engine created from scratch, even if that engine is already finished? And the bit about creating their own assets is hollow rationalization, too. It's not like Double Fine is just porting a decades-old PC game too.
- bane 15y agoWhy stretch it out more? LSL was fun, but it's time is passed. Why not something new like "Skinny Tie Sam" or "Pleather Pants Paul"? Create the world from scratch and don't be beholden to what's come before. edit in case anybody is interested, they should check out Matt Chat on Youtube, some of the most compelling interviews with adventure game designers of the past... Here's Part 1 of "Al Lowe" (designer of LSL) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGGEFQdZuw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGGEFQdZuw
- Gring 15y agoAgree. Larry was a child of its time. There should be no remake of "National Lampoon's Vacation", and for the exact same reason, for LSL.
- un1xl0ser 15y agoI remember asking my parents for the age verification questions to be able to run LSL when I was a kid. I would head downstairs and ask her random trivia questions because it was easier than asking the Encyclopedia Britannica or what passed for the internet in those days. Obviously this day and age this is not possible due to Wikipedia, but in it's time and place it made me more likely to play rogue and/or do something productive with my computer. Not sure if anyone remembers that aspect of it, but I still do. If there was a moral story, it was lost on me at that age, and not likely to revisit it. Certainly better than Custer's Revenge, which is a horrifying concept and makes me very sad. If you think that LSL is a good and relevant example of misogyny and bad attitudes towards women, then apparently you never turn on your TV, watch movies or look at at advertisements around you. A rehash of LSL is the least of our problems in this space. People feel better when you treat them as people, not objects. This goes for men and women. We're all human and deserve a lot of respect and understanding. Some people probably like the cheap thrills that the game offers, some are nostalgic, some may be interested in social commentary. This is all quite all right and healthy. // I got Neil Young's "Pochohontas" associated with that terrible game. AAAAAAAAHHH. :'(
- artmageddon 15y agoDo you recall what kind of questions the game would ask? Most games typically asked something out of the user manual.
- kgreene2 15y agoAl Lowe has all the questions listed http://www.allowe.com/Larry/1questions.htm http://www.allowe.com/Larry/1questions.htm
- danso 15y agoI think the fact that this is primarily a PC port with iOS/Android merely a possibility is a deal-killer for me, thhe content notwithstanding. I'm not saying that PCs aren't technically the largest gaming platform by user base...I'm saying that the largest base of casual gamers with money to blow by far is iOS and Android. From what I remember, LSL and Kings Quest were largely casual in mechanic. Secret of Monkey Island and several of the modern Capcom adventure games (Phantom Detective) have made successful transitions. If this is being built from scratch, why is this not focused on what is clearly becoming the biggest casual gaming platform?
- jiggy2011 15y agoIt could do well on either or both platforms. Most of the gamers who remember playing the originals back in the day are likely to own a PC or Mac now. If I were in charge of developing this I would be using a cross platform setup from the start, Unity etc.
- ergo14 15y agoBecause the game is not going to be casualized, that was clearly stated - they will not dumb it down. If it's a problem then I guess you don't have to chip in. Lets just vote with wallets.
- danso 15y agoSorry, just because something is "stated", like, "This game is going to be the best game ever made", doesn't necessarily make it so. How exactly is LSL going to be made less casual than the original? Is there a first-person shooter being integrated into it? 3D graphics? Will it require a dedicated controller? Assuming all the answers to those questions are no, then this is a game that would easily fit on the Android/iOS platforms, where much more complex adventure games have already been ported (Secret of Monkey Island, Capcom's Phantom Detective, etc).
- jiggy2011 15y agoFrom the video I saw it looked like they were planning to make tablets a first class citizen with this game. I can however see this going more for the nostalgia market than the "casual" market as such. I can see that it would work well on a tablet but there may be other reasons to port to the PC first. For example there the already existing codebase (although massively out of date). Also their developers may be more familiar with programming for the PC, so it may just be quicker to bring to market on that platform. Also at the moment there are just more people that own PCs than there are who own iPads. If there is sufficient interest/funding for this project I doubt that it will not be released for tablet devices at some stage.
- stanzyamith 15y agoThis brings back memories
- TomGullen 15y agoLoved this game as a kid. My granddad had a computer with it installed. When he was downstairs talking to my parents I'd load it up. At the beginning of the game it had a bunch of questions to 'prove you were and adult'. I rarely got past those questions! That was half the fun, when I actually got in the game I didn't really know what to do but loved the way you could apparently do anything.
- papaver 15y agoHow sad. A remake for 500k? Really? The 8-bitness of the old-school games gave the old sierra games their magic. I would have loved to play a new larry game, but this just makes me sad. What a waste...