The great thing about the various series of adventure games by Sierra during the 80s and 90s was that they offered something for everybody. If you wanted to discover fairy-tale landscapes and rescue princesses from evil witches, then you played the King's Quest games. If you wanted to fly spaceships and fight aliens in the future, your choice was Space Quest. If you wanted to be a badass cop and hunt criminals, you went with Police Quest.

But maybe you weren't interested in any of that heavy, heroic stuff. Maybe you wanted to play something that was a little closer to your life than saving the world - like, say, hanging around in sleazy bars trying to impress some girls that are completely out of reach for you and therefore making a complete idiot of yourself. Those of you were saved in 1987, when Sierra published the first game of what would become one of the most popular adventure game series of all time. This game was called Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.

Here's the premise: For one night you take the role of the 40-year-old programmer Larry Laffer, who has the strict goal of finally losing his virginity and entering a relationship with a woman. Therefore you visit a bar, a casino, a disco and various other places to find girls, impress them and, ideally, get in their pants. Wikipedia says Leisure Suit Larry is "regarded as the first adult graphic adventure", but if you look at it, there isn't really any hardcore adult stuff in the game, it's all more about naughty innuendos. Hell, it even is kind of educational: If Larry has unprotected sex with a prostitute, his genitals explode shortly after. You know, just like in real life.

The game was written and programmed by Al Lowe, who himself was inspired by Chuck Benton's purely text-based Softporn Adventure. Gameplay wise it's like every other early Sierra adventure. You walk around using the arrow keys and if you want to do something special you simply type it in. That works quite well and is especially fun for the reason that you can do a lot of different stuff. The best thing, however, - and that for me is the selling point of the Leisure Suit Larry games - is that most of your actions are commented on by the narrator in often hilarious kinds of ways. Al Lowe's writing really is what makes his games enjoyable, because even when you fail, there is always something to laugh.

In 1991 Sierra published an enhanced remake with point-and-click-controls and amazingly beautiful VGA graphics. And of course there are five more Leisure Suit Larry adventure games and actually all of them are still fun to play. But the first one stands out as one of the most important titles to bring comedy into gaming. Also, cocks.