Leisure Suit Larry

Larry Laffer stands by the sea and needs to secure dinner. But to get it, he first has to find a girlfriend. Or at least something that vaguely resembles one. Leisure Suit Larry from 1987 is a point-and-click adventure with a cheeky edge — and that's what fundamentally sets it apart from all other games of that era.

You travel through Lost Wages (clearly a parody of Las Vegas) and tackle the tried-and-true adventure mechanics: collect items, combine them, talk to characters. The goal is simple — ask someone out on a date and survive all the surprises waiting for you. The EGA graphics are primitive, but that's exactly the flavor of the eighties — a character with a leeched nose, girls in skimpy bikinis rendered as eight colored squares. But typing commands into the console isn't boring; the game doesn't rigidly follow English phrases from the manual, instead rewarding experimentation and nonsensical command entries with replies dripping with irony.

The trouble is, without the classic noun dictionaries, the game loses its romantic energy fairly quickly. Once you find the second, third solution to the same problem and the same dusty motel teleport again, you realize it's not about gritting your teeth and enduring dull moments. This game has personality — cynical, self-assured cynicism that wasn't exactly common in the eighties.

Leisure Suit Larry never tried to be a big deal, yet it became a cult classic. Maybe because it didn't meter out jokes by the number of elements in each room, but by the consistency of one idea: sex is the goal, sure, but if you obsess over it the whole time, you'll never achieve anything. The game forces you to think, to have fun — and most importantly, not to take yourself seriously.

Today it's a retro experience. Graphics don't matter, text does — and Larry holds up remarkably well on that front. When you fire it up today in a browser via DOSBox, two hours await that feel unlike anything else you remember from that time. It won't be flawless, but it'll feel like something that had a soul.