Clad in the polyester raiment of an extinct era, Leisure Suit Larry commenced his adventure with little more than a canister of breath spray and a mission: to get laid by midnight. While the other video game titans of the era were busy saving the princess Larry was busy looking for women half his age to shamefully defile in a shabby hotel room. While the pixels of stronger characters walked along the edge of a razor to save the world from Metal Gear or Mother Brain Larry endured filthy dive bar bathrooms, incontinent dogs, and the nagging torment of 40-ish years of virginity.



Larry was the balding, 40-something protagonist of Sierra On-Line's series of Leisure Suit Larry games. The first title released in 1987 and subsequent titles followed until 1996. In 2004 Sierra resurrected the series without the involvement of Al Lowe, the character's original creator. The main character in the next-gen games is not the same Larry as in the original series; instead he's introduced as the original Larry's nephew. The newer game is smuttier, I've heard, but I've never played it so I wouldn't know.

Anyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's and had a PC in the house probably had a secret copy of Leisure Suit Larry stowed away on discs labeled as something else. Mine were labeled "Battletech 3" which was never a game that really existed but my parents sure as hell didn't know that. When I was 10 we didn't have a PC so I only got to play on rare occasions at my aunt's house. Around 1991 we got an IBM PS/1 and I quickly procured copies of the Leisure Suit Larry games which I usually played for a little while with my friends before my parents got home from work (yes, being latchkey let us get away with so much shit.)

So who's the real video game hero? Back then I would have said "Solid Snake" or "Mega Man." Back then I was 10 years old. I didn't know. Larry seemed like just a joke.

By the time I hit the post-college "singles scene" (I vomited a little bit after typing that) I was overcome by recollections of Leisure Suit Larry. When your dating pool expands from 18-21 (fish, barrel, shooting) year old college students in a Midwestern college town to 18-35 year old women in a major Midwestern city the spectre of rejection tends to hover a little more closely around every turn. You begin to see those guys out in shitty dive bars, drunkenly slobbering out pick up lines and you realize that most of those guys are Leisure Suit Larry.




There may have not been a Dragon in his final dungeon and he may have carried his armor in a foil wrapper in his wallet but Leisure Suit Larry is every bit as much of a hero as Master Chief or Link.

But he hasn't laid as much pipe as Mario.