One of the most popular computer game series of the 80s and 90s, the tongue-in-cheek (or hand-in-pocket) humor of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was a hit with juveniles of all ages. The game began its life as a basic text adventure for the Apple II called "Softporn Adventure" released by Sierra Online in 1981. Digital titillation being a rather new form of entertainment in the early 80s, the game was, of course, a huge success, prompting Sierra to task now-legendary programmer Al Lowe with the honor of rewriting the game to utilize a graphics engine (read: digital boobs). The result of Al's hard work was perhaps greater than the sum as the oddly endearing protagonist of the game, Larry Laffer, or as he is better known, Leisure Suit Larry, unexpectedly became a very marketable property. Five sequels (some say six) and millions of 5.25 inch floppies later the original series finally came to an end in 1996. After many years of dormancy, several questionable Larry adventures eventually appeared on Xbox and Playstation but they lacked involvement from the original creators and dropped most of the naughty-but-not-dirty humor of the classic series by replacing any potential instances of "clever" with "cleavage." Good eye-candy, to be sure, but weak gameplay. As one would expect, these titles sold poorly (they wouldn't even take my copy of Magna Cum Laude at Game Xchange, true story) which sadly brought the entire franchise to a screeching halt. Boo. But here's the part where the little indie developer swoops in to save the day. From Wikipedia:
In June 2011, Replay Games announced on their blog that they had acquired a license for the Leisure Suit Larry series. Replay Games plans to re-release the titles it has licensed for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, XBLA, PSN, On-Live, and Steam. It is also announced that Al Lowe will be involved with the development of the new releases.
And then:
In April 2012, Replay Games initiated the Kickstarter project Make Leisure Suit Larry come again! which finished funding on May 2, 2012 and secured a total of $674,598 ($655,182 via Kickstarter and $19,416 via Paypal) in funding compared to the $500,000 that was asked for. The "HD" Version of the game has a completion date of October 2012 listed, but it might be delayed to December 2012 or early 2013 since hitting the $650,000 mark. The $650,000 mark will add more story, dialogues and one more character.
Yup, they even got old Al Lowe to come back. Click on the links below. You know you want to.
No comments:
Post a Comment