Slashdot Mirror

Dear Mr. Baker,

As an employee of an institution of higher education, I have few very basic expectations. Chief among these is that my direct superiors have an intellect that ranges above the common ground squirrel. After your consistent and annoying harassment of my co-workers and me during our commission of duties, I can only surmise that you are one of the few true genetic wastes of our time.

Asking me, a network administrator, to explain every nuance of everything I do each time you happen to stroll into my office is not only a waste of time, but also a waste of precious oxygen. I was hired because I know how to network computer systems, and you were apparently hired to provide amusement to your employees, who watch you vainly attempt to understand the concept of "cut and paste" as it is explained to you for the hundredth time.

You will never understand computers. Something as incredibly simple as binary still gives you too many options. You will also never understand why people hate you, but I am going to try and explain it to you, even though I am sure this will be just as effective as telling you what an IP is. Your shiny new iMac has more personality than you ever will.

You wander around the building all day, shiftlessly seeking fault in others. You have a sharp dressed, useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.

Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation; however, I have a few parting thoughts:

When someone calls you in reference to employment, it is illegal for you to give me a bad recommendation as I have consistently performed my duties and even more. The most you can say to hurt me is, "I prefer not to comment." To keep you honest, I will have friends randomly call you over the next couple of years, because I know you would be unable to do it on your own.

I have all the passwords to every account on the system and I know every password you have used for the last five years. If you decide to get cute, I will publish your "Favorites," which I conveniently saved when you made me "back up" your useless files. I do believe that terms like "Lolita" are not viewed favorably by the university administrations.

When you borrowed the digital camera to "take pictures of your mother's b-day," you neglected to mention that you were going to take nude pictures of yourself in the mirror. Then, like the techno-moron you are, you forgot to erase them. Suffice it to say, I have never seen such odd acts with a ketchup bottle. I assure you that those photos are being kept in safe places pending your authoring of a glowing letter of recommendation. (And, for once, would you please try to use spellcheck? I hate correcting your mistakes.)

I expect the letter of recommendation on my desk by 8:00 am tomorrow. One word of this to anybody and all of your twisted little repugnant obsessions will become public knowledge. Never f*ck with your systems administrator, Mr. Baker! They know what you do with all that free time!

Sincerely

David Blocker

Network Administrator

This was an effective age verification before there was google.
When I asked my parents "who was Joe Dimaggio?"... They knew *something* was up.

http://www.allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html

There's your questions for at least the first one. The VGA reboot and LSL3 questions are also listed on the right side.

Prime Examples:

O. J. Simpson is
a. an R & B singer.
b. under indictment.
c. embarrassed by his first name (Olivia).
d. no one to fool with.

(At the time, answer was D. Rather prophetic question and answer choice, though!)

The germ that transmits syphilis is
a. Spiro Agnew.
b. Spirochete.
c. Spirograph.
d. Barbarella.

(Answer C)

LSL3 was one of the first games I bought, then I went back and played 1 & 2. The questions to ensure you were old enough to play were amusing, but also indicative of how a searchable internet has changed everything. In the early 90s, you actually had to know the answers, know someone who knew the answers, or visit a library. Now it's three words in a google search (lsl3 questions age):

http://www.allowe.com/Larry/3questions.htm

And an interesting history of copy discouraging techniques for LSL:
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm

LSL3 was one of the first games I bought, then I went back and played 1 & 2. The questions to ensure you were old enough to play were amusing, but also indicative of how a searchable internet has changed everything. In the early 90s, you actually had to know the answers, know someone who knew the answers, or visit a library. Now it's three words in a google search (lsl3 questions age):

http://www.allowe.com/Larry/3questions.htm

And an interesting history of copy discouraging techniques for LSL:
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm

If you're looking for a good old school point-and-click adventure game, I highly recommend hunting down a copy of Torin's Passage: http://www.allowe.com/Torin/index.htm

Lowe designed the game so he could play it with his daughter - he's most famous for working on the baudy Leisure Suit Larry titles. That having been said, there's some sly humor there that only adults will understand. But at heart, it's a fun family game - there's even a hint system so little kids don't get too frustrated with it.

The Windows version never worked well even on Windows 95, but the DOS version should run perfectly in DosBox.

Who was banned from "Saturday Night Live" because he lost a telephone poll?
a. John Belushi
b. Dan Akroyd
c. Chevy Chase
d. Andy Kaufman

Mork was from the planet
a. Ork.
b. Vulcan.
c. Krypton.
d. Pluto.

A nehru jacket is
a. made from tanned nehru hides.
b. out of date.
c. a Middle Eastern prophylactic.
d. around a car's radiator.

If a physician were stranded on a desert island with Bo Derek, he would probably
a. build a boat.
b. take two aspirins.
c. overcharge her.
d. thank God.

More here.

I always wanted to make a spam-filtering method based upon the age-verification questions in Leisure Suit Larry 1.

You can download the SPA and some other Al Lowe's old games here: http://www.allowe.com/More/download.htm

Leisure Suit Larry's anti-piracy measures are still the best, though!

Not quite. "The missing floppies" was a joke title. Here(and here) is the real story from Al Lowe himself.

Not quite. "The missing floppies" was a joke title. Here(and here) is the real story from Al Lowe himself.

1. HEYA. Leisure Suit Larry never allowed minors to play the game, by asking trivia questions that only adults would know, like:

"Who lost a daughter but gained a 'meathead?'"

Of course, make the user type in the answer, instead of giving multiple choice.

2. KNOWYA. Only allow new users recommended by existing users. Secure the recommendation process, like asking for confirmation using carrier pigeons with one-time pads.

That's why I said "real larry game", Al Lowe was totally shut out of that game.

Why did Sierra (Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest) and Lucasarts (The Dig) ever give up on the Adventure game in the first place, and why can't they save it?

"Google Now Officially a Nuclear Power; Microsoft Sets Pants to Brown Alert"

Oldie but goodie.

If minors are prohibited, how does one prove one is an adult ?

What can you get in a "red light" district?

a. in many cases, trouble
b. the Blue Plate Special
c. outdoor lighting fixtures
d. lingerie

Enjoy!

Developers make games, yet they are treated poorly.
Therefore they must really like making games.
Therefore they probably spend some of their free time making games.
Therefore games get made outside of the industry.
Therefore those games are not necessarily subject to the worst failings of the industry.
Therefore, assuming the world doesn't end first, you can expect games that overcome these flaws to arrive, but they won't necessarily be in a box on a shelf at EB.

The lack of convenience of gaming at a workstation can be overcome by physically moving the computer to the entertainment center, buying a couple of aftermarket joysticks, and downloading the joystick input emulator.

Honestly, gamers have everything they need to make their own games right now. Not a programmer? Get the source off sf.net for the game that most resembles what you'd enjoy and mess with it. Not a voice actor or musician? Sample sound bites from your favorite media. Not a 3D modeler? Google Poser, people make some of their models freely available and you can tweak them without getting in too deep. Not a lawyer? Don't make the game available to anyone but yourself. Would anyone else really understand it, after all?

Or Leisure Suit Larry 4 for that matter...

"Writing: Ratchet and Clank 3. Most of the nominees have really terrible writing. HL2? Give me a break. The game was awesome, but the writing? R&C3 was funny and quirky, and did quite a bit to make the overall experience of the game more fun."

How LSL:MCL made the writing list is beyond me. Especially when you consider that the original creator is pretty much disappointed with Sierra's blasphemous creation. The writing was horrid from what i've heard, which is a major departure from the series since it's always had top notch writing and humour.

WoW being on the visual list is impressive considering that it has the least cutting-edge graphics out of everything on that list.

I think you nailed most of the winners dead on.

Al Lowe, the creator of the original (and who had absolutely nothing to do with this POS) said this about MCL:

It is not an adventure game.There are no real puzzles, no interactive dialog, no narrator, no character development, and nearly no plot. Much of the dialogue is uninspired and trite. There's more profanity in the first scene than in all the previous Larry games combined. Women cuss like sailors. The F-word is repeated so often the writers must have used a macro.

around the same time, al lowe, creator of leisure suit larry and many other games was tasked at sierra to create a relatively largescale multiplayer online game. read about it on his site, here.

around the same time, al lowe, creator of leisure suit larry and many other games was tasked at sierra to create a relatively largescale multiplayer online game. read about it on his site, here.

It was Laffer...but maybe they change it because they completely left Al Lowe out of this one!

Concur.

They gave it their best shot, but they got it wrong.

But then again, so did many others. Clippy notwithstanding, a day will come when personalized interaction with computers will not only exceed what now obtains between humans and pets, but also what now obtains what now obtains between humans and other humans. When this finally happens, there's gonna be some seriously weird shit going down along the lines of the ancient curse about living in interesting times.

Wait, Larry Laffer is choosing the ads for us? I hope they have a PG version.

The last update doesn't sound too promising. "Considerable turnover at VU Games", and "we're regrouping". Al Lowe update

I remember reading (can't find mention on the site though) that Al Lowe, creator of the Leisure Suit Larry series, released the copyright on various old games (the ones owned by him rather than the publishers) for abandonware, since otherwise they would have died out... Confirmation would be good though.

For what it's worth, here's Al Lowe's explanation for the why he chose to skip LSL4 and how, in the process, he "invented" online gaming. Not exactly modest, but interesting nevertheless.

And from Al Lowe's web page:

A peek at the first (cancelled) LSL8 project.

and the answers, they are all right here.

Most of them are easy, though I can see why a young kid wouldn't know them. Some of them I still don't know, just because I don't have the right chronological frame of reference.

Let's hope they don't wind up the way Sierra did (Once a company with quality releases, now a crappy-publisher-house).

What happened to them AFAIK was pretty much the same. - Key developers (Al Lowe, Roberta Williams, etc.) from Sierra left the company (or put on crappy games).

The death of Sierra as a game-developer pretty much meant the end of adventure games as a mainstream-genre... It's hard to think of the same happening to the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre, but then again if someone told me X years ago, that the adventuregames genre would be dead now, I would have laughed.

DecafJedi

Funny this, they are available at Al Lowe's own site.

I was actually thinking about this topic the other day, so here's what I decided.

I would start out by having him (male for the sake of simplicity) play old games... games like Jetpack, Al Lowe's games, text-based games like Tradewars, Zork, Adventure. There are three reasons for this: One, these are games I remembered playing as a kid, and loved. It'd be great to rediscover them through your kid's eyes. Two, they're cheap. Every single console cost $100-$200 when it came out, with its games costing ~$50. These games are all free (and if they're all your kid plays, then he won't even know what he's missing until he gets to school). The third reason, which is the most relevent to this discussion, is that all these games would be very simple to code. If he plays and enjoys text-based adventures, it'd be much easier to code Tommy's Adventure than it would be to code Super Mario World 1024.

So, once he's been enjoying these games for a while, I'd ask if he wanted to make his own. For starters I'd just ask for a description of the game, which I would then code. Three reasons: one, it'll be easier for me to make the game than to teach him to program (when he's still very young); two, he'll learn the value of writing design documents; and three, when he's ready to start programming, he'll have ready access to the source code to games that he's designed.

Of course alongside all of this I'd be giving him constructive toys like Legos and encouraging him to create. Personally, problem solving is easy for me to do, but completely original design is quite a bit more difficult. Learning that would be much better than simply learning to program: it'd give him motivation to program.

It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).

Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:

• "Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.

  After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."

This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.

Andrius

P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.

It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).

Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:

• "Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.

  After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."

This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.

Andrius

P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.

I really find it hard to believe that someone would have gone to this much trouble just to play Richard and Alan's Escape From Hell or Hillsfar.

But as for your suggestion for using an Atari or Calico -- there was no Bard's Tale for the Calicovision, nor Space Quest. For DOS, however, we had Wing Commander, and a whole series of Leisure Suit Larry. By 1991, we had the original BattleTech and BattleTech II, not that wierd MechWarrior similator thing.

Hmm...I wonder what I did with the scratch and sniff card from Leather Goddesses of Phobos?

Hmm...it's times like this when I'm glad there's places like emulation.net so I can find something interesting to play with.

(yes, this is partly sarcasm...it's up to you to determine what part)

To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.

Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million).

To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.

Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million).

Yep...it was Time Magazine's review of Softporn that put Sierra on the map.

Ask the man himself, Al Lowe, creator of the series.

Check out the finished product. Who wouldn't like to get their hands on one of these?

Al Lowe (the genius we all know and love as the creator of the Leisure Suit Larry series) and Ken Williamson humorously claim to have invented internet gaming while working at Sierra Online. Read the entire article here.

Haha. Actually, I just found Al Lowe's (creator of Larry) website and it has an article about the pre-history of Larry Laffer.

...will they bring back Softporn, the precursor to Leisure Suit Larry.

For that matter, when are we going to see an OSS release of all of this stuff? :)

What I don't understand is this: They claim that even though the company may not be making any money on a product (like Elder Scrolls: Arena), they need to enforce "piracy" in order to protect their right to make a sequel with the same brand. But OSS is copyrighted AND distributed freely... That doesn't invalidate the copyright... right? It's not like someone else is making Joe's Own Elder Scrolls, which would likely be a Trademark violation.

In any case, even if they are correct under present law, I think these game companies (most of which are now owned by EA) have a social and moral obligation to make these old games available in some form or another. And if they refuse to, I would think they are obligated to not prevent others to fulfull that role.

I play a lot of these abandonware games, as an aspiring game programmer/writer/designer, they provide a lot of inspiration as well as nostalgia. I pay for the classic games/collections when I can find them (Ultima 1-8, Wizardry 1-8, etc...). But I'm sure as hell going to download them for free if that's the only way I can get them. That's what I would want people to do if I had written them (which is basically what we heard from the game developer side in the article).

I went to Al Lowe's web site and he said to order the LSL collection: To order it, go to Amazon.com. It's shipping now! Purchase Leisure Suit Larry's Ultimate Pleasure Pack. Guess what? Availability: This item is out of stock.

What would be really great is if some of these companies released their hardened grip and opened some of the source code for these games. I'd love to hack around on that stuff...

-If