Armed with $90, an outfit best suited to Saturday Night Fever, pocket lint and a breath spray, I jumped back into 1987. Giving it my best attempt to finally lose my virginity! Larry Laffer’s the name and corny chat-up lines are my speciality. Well that’s what I would have been saying if I could get past the Age Verification!  Being born in the early 80’s and being English left me with a massive hill to climb when trying to just get in to ‘Leisure Suit Larry- In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards’. And being quite stubborn, I refused the help of the fountains of knowledge that is Google or Wikipedia. So 45 minutes later and half a head of hair worse off we’re away…

In front of me is a bar, the neon sign tells me I’m at Lefty’s; a high class establishment specifically built with life’s under achievers and the mentally ill in mind, Sounds like my kind of place!

“OPEN DOOR” is my first typed command and without hesitation I’m at the bar ordering a drink… within a matter of minutes I’m staggering to the toilet whilst balancing a shot of whiskey in my pocket. Just some of the delights of the wonderful world of Al Lowe’s Psyche, the game progresses and gets more and more maddening. And devious, Every turn is a potential ‘you died’ scenario, so make sure you save regularly (that’s how I lost the rest of my hair!) and remember “It’s better to be safe than sorry”.

Having not played this game since I was a child (and definitely not old enough to pass the age verification) I was a little lost with where to start. I think the best way to describe it is; putting together a jigsaw without a box (no idea what it’s meant to look like or how many pieces there are to it!) thankfully I remembered little bits an that helped massively when trying to figure out what to do next.

I could type for hours about the delicate touches of hilarity that litter this game, or tell you about some of the very strange things you get points for. But such are the intricacies of this Leisure Suit Larry that everything is a potential spoiler and I’d rather let you have the laugh out loud moments I have just relived.

The obvious downside to playing this is that it is hideously out dated, both graphically and audibly an 8 bit engine is all that powered the mechanics of this game so unless you plug headphones in you are going to be greeted by the tremendously loud 8bit cheesy theme tune from internal speakers, and trying to find things in the game is nigh on impossible at times due to epic pixilation, but as jet set willy proved  graphics are not the be all and end all. Having said that I am very happy to announce that after 25 years and a successful Kickstarter campaign Leisure Suit Larry will ‘come again’ in a updated ‘reloaded’ version promising more laughs and no developer censorship, due out in 2012. To be continued…..

To learn more about Leisure Suit Larry: In The land of the lounge lizards “Reloaded” visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leisuresuitlarry/make-leisure-suit-larry-come-again?ref=live