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Leisure Suit Larry Comes Again (Video)
In this exclusive video interview, Slashdot chats with Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe, who is working with Replay Games and Kickstarter to bring Larry Laffer to a whole new generation of computers. They'll maintain the original Larry style of being naughty without crossing the line into porn, which is appropriate for an 80s game about a 70s dork who wears a (shudder) leisure suit. You can donate to this effort through Kickstarter if you like. (We aren't getting paid to say this, and it's a labor of love for Al, too, who is more recently famous for running the hokey daily comedy email newsletter, CyberJoke 3000.)
It seems like all the old designers of all the cool games from my youth are suddenly coming out with Kickstarters and/or new products. For old time Sierra it was Al Lowe, then Jane Jensen of Gariel Knight fame, and just recently the Two Men from Andromeda are back(Space Quest). Brian Fargo of Interplay fame is back with Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun is back with its original creator. Its an exciting development, but my hunch is its short lived.
Liesure Suit Larry was never a big favorite of mine, mostly because I was too young to get any of the jokes. I still donated though just to show support for the old Sierra crew. Next we need to get Toys For Bob to work on Star Control 4.
"Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?"
I think you're giving LSL's adultness too much credit.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Great title! And here I thought you guys had thrown out all of your fun-ness after the big corporate buyout!
I don't respond to AC's.
We've got emulators for the platforms Leisure Suit Larry ran on. Why port the game?
I love the original LSL series, especially the first one. I'd love to see it in High Def with actual voice. Would also be fun to play on the iPad or Android tablet.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
It's already been remade as a point-and-click adventure game, why would they need to remake a remake again?
What's to shudder at?
xyzzy
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
As a horny adolescent, I think Leisure Suit Larry's age check did more to teach me about history than any classes I took.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I read those LSL Kickstarter pages some days ago, and they read exactly like some April Fools joke. It appears they are serious and I wish them luck, but just look at this piece from the FAQ, for example:
Our good friends over at Tell Tale have licensed King's Quest from Activision. If we do our job right then maybe, just MAYBE we'll be able to partner with them and ruinite the Space Quest team, King's Quest team (go Roberta!!!!) and Police Quest team for re-makes or new versions of those (Space Quest 7 anybody?).
Leisure suit Larry cums again?
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Now that I pledged $15, I don't feel so bad about pirating it using the dual 5 1/4" floppy drives on my Tandy 1000.
It's interesting that they measured piracy based on the difference between the number of actual copies of the software they sold versus game guides.
Where's the Space Quest kickstarter/site? I see it mentioned in a few places but haven't seen anything official?
I'm wondering how kickstarter is going to be long term. It seems like a lot of crappy games manage to get funding which amazes me. Kickstarter is for most projects a means of preselling the end result of the project and from what I can tell, the money put into it usually dwarfs what you would be paying if you were buying it retail. I have a cool game idea that I've been working with and its feasible, unique, and doable, but I don't have the free time. With kickstarter I could secure money that I would lose by reducing the hours I put into my job (or quitting if enough people donate) and dedicate my time to the project, then turn and make a good profit if it sells. Worst case, I at least get paid if I set my target threshold high enough, and based on what I'm seeing, I'll get paid more than I'm being paid right now.
My only issue is that I hate top skimmers and there are two on these project donations. Kickstarter takes 3% and the credit card companies take another 3%. The economics of it always make it a win since there is no risk in putting your project up, but still, is there a kickstarter like website that takes a smaller cut?
They already had a chance to reboot the franchise.
They shat out one of the worst games ever made for the xbox, or any other console.
Rob, your editing again?
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
This is not the first time it's come back. Last time was in 2009. Got absolutely horrible reviews. That was clearly shovelware with the name slapped on it. This take sounds like someone is actually putting effort into it though.
This is going to need a Kinect interface... just so we can watch the youtube videos of people playing.
Touch devices are perfect for old school adventure gaming and I won't mind the update on my desktop either. Pledged.
Well, used to rock. Let's hope he has a chance to relive his daze of glory! :)
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
I see what you did there...
The first person with the ball to create a true real life graphical experience of a totally X rated game will become a billionaire in world record time. Why doesn't anybody do this?
Title: Help Al Lowe Bring Back Leisure Suit Larry!"
Description: 80s video game character Larry Laffer is stuck in the Land of the Lounge Lizards and needs your help to return.
00:00) <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar with "Leisure Suit Larry Comes Again!" scrolling from right to left appears over a title graphic in the style of the old Leisure Suit Larry games reading "Leisure Suit Larry in The Land of the Lounge Lizards" while in the background the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune plays.
00:10) <TITLE>
A picture-in-picture insert of Al Lowe giving his interview is shown in the bottom right corner over a view of a Leisure Suit Larry game setting.
"Your Host: Al Lowe" scrolls into the SlashdotTV logo bar.
Throughout the interview, the background changes between various Leisure Suit Larry game settings and the picture-in-picture view of Al Lowe disappears, re-appears, zooms in, zooms out, and other shenanigans appear.
00:11) Al>
About a year ago Paul Trowe gave me a call and said "I think I can obtain the rights to Leisure Suit Larry. [...]
00:19) <TITLE>
A static view of Paul Trowe fades in and out of the picture-in-picture view while the SlashdotTV logo bar reads "Paul Trowe is the primary instigator of ReplayGames.com"
00:19) Al>
[...] Would you be interested in helping me do a remake?" and I said "Absolutely!"
In the last.. oh, gosh.. it took him probably a year to obtain the rights, and then a period of months to seek funding.
When Tim Schafer [...]
00:19) <TITLE>
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Tim Shafer of Double Fine did an amazing KickStarter campaign".
00:19) Al>
[...] blazed a trail for the rest of us back in - when was it, February or March - he made it obvious that crowdsourcing was the way to go with this thing.
So we jumped on KickStarter, we developed a.. I think a funny video, it's kind of pleasant.. and asked people for money and we've been absolutely astounded with the response we've gotten - a real kick.
01:08) Al>
I think we've done a lot of creative - shall I say - reward levels.
We've got a bunch of interesting stuff, and in the true spirit of Leisure Suit Larry; a little on the naughty side, but not obscene.
We're just havin' a ball with this.
01:33) <TITLE>
The background changes to a static screenshot of the "Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!" KickStarter project appears.
The SlashdotTV logo bar fades in and out of view, reading "Donation figures as of Apr. 10, 2012".
The figures* referred to are:
5 updates
6,411 backers
872 comments
$267,723 pledged of $500,00 goal.
01:33) Al>
The way KickStarter works is: you pledge money at whatever level you wish to contribute, and then if [...]
01:40) <TITLE>
The background changes to Leisure Suit Larry game settings again.
01:40) Al>
[...] the campaign doesn't make its goal, nobody gets charged anything; we get nothing, and you pay nothing.
01:48) Al>
We're giving people a chance to actually be in the game, to put an image of themselves in the game.
In fact, if you remember Leisure Suit Larry, there was always a friendly dog that, if you stopped moving for too long, the dog would show up [...]
02:06) <TITLE>
The background changes to a view of the scene described.
02:06) Al>
[...] and humiliate you in yet another way; we're even giving you a chance to have your dog immortalized in the new version of the game *laughs*
02:16) <TITLE>
The background music changes to that of a live version of the Leisure Suit Larry theme tune, played by Axes Denied.
02:26) Al>
We need your support.
If you ever played Larry and maybe didn't pay for it back then, now that you've got money, you've got a job, and you can afford it: come and help us - give a donation - give us a little donation on KickStarter.com [...]
02:45) <TITL
Some, but not many.
Keep in mind that at best, you can only drop the platform's take. If you need to accept credit cards, PayPal, or whatever - they have their own charges. You can try to accept BitCoins, I suppose.
The exact takes per platform are sometimes difficult to decipher, depending on how you set up your project, whether or not it's successful, how people are paying (if a backer uses a throw-away credit card, the take is higher), etc. Plus they change them every once in a while without particular notice, so I stopped noting them down.
I won't copy/paste my earlier post from another story, just follow the link for some alternative platform names:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2786853&cid=39685171
To be honest, though, you'd have better success at KickStarter and let them take their ~5%, unless you've got a very good publicity campaign to point people to your alternative of choice.
will we see Max Headroom again?
If you go to the Kickstarter page they have allot more information. First off the last Two games that came out under the "Leisure Suit Larry" name where not done by any of the original team. Al Lowe the creator of the LSL series had great disdain for both of them. Its really no surprise they were both flops.
If you go check out http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/s8u88/i_am_al_lowe_creator_of_leisure_suit_larry_ama/ Al and the team really spell out things.
Like this is not a simple reskinning with some glitter dumped on it. This is a from the ground up rebuild, and while they are keeping the original premise of the story. "A guy that's in his 40's looking for love, or to atleast loose his virginity" They are not ruling out a great deal of changes and updates.
Now for the rest of you wanting other Sierra games, you should really take notice. This LSL Reloaded and Jane Jenson's KickStarter are the testing grounds to see if KickStarter works for funding or not. The higher both of these Sierra Veterans KickStarter $$$ goes the better chance we have at getting other games. I mean if two fairly big names like Al Lowe and Jane Jenson have issues raising the money it will really put a damper on the Kickstater thing.
If you don't like "Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded" or Jane Jensons projects, Take a quick look around and see if there is anyone you know that does. I mean this would be a Awesome gift! I'm intending on giving it as a gift to one of my Married Friends.
Bottom Line, Many people are watching these projects including the "Space Quest" Two Guys from Andromeda, If this succeeds you going to see allot more of your old favourites. As they will see what doublefine and Waste Land 2 did were not just the prefect storm, a rare occurrence. And it makes a great gift for a minimum of $15 Dollars. I've given gag gifts that cost more than that.