Lowe wasn't very fond of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, the most recent Larry game, in which he wasn't involved. The game featured a new, younger protagonist called Larry Lovage, a supposed nephew of Larry Laffer, who starts his freshman year in college. The "next-generation" Larry game, the first one ever to be released on consoles (PlayStation 2 and Xbox) as well as on PC, exhibited a substantial style breach from the old games: story and logical puzzles were out, replaced by a freely explorable world in which the character could play minigames. The humor was quite different, too: There was much, much more cavorting (according to Lowe, the opening sequence of Magna Cum Laude alone was raunchier than all previous Larry games combined), there was verbal profanity and there were fart jokes.
"Playing Magna Cum Laude was like receiving a video from my son's kidnappers," says Lowe. "You're glad he's still alive, but look what they've done to him!"
Magna Cum Laude got one thing more or less right: Larry Lovage, much like his uncle, remained a lovable loser who tries to beat the game of life his own clumsy way. But in the first Larry game, humiliating oneself was actually a necessary skill for completing the game.
Playing Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is an exercise in self-deprecation. From the first scenes in Lefty's Bar, you have to go through multiple degrading situations to attain your goals. Then comes losing your virginity to a prostitute: Unless you want your crotch to start burning after the act, abruptly ending the game, you will have to buy yourself some condoms. But the proprietor of the nearby night shop submits you to a tedious and unnecessary questionnaire to get to know your exact taste in rubber protection, just so he can exclaim it loudly to the other clients.
After that, the whore - the first woman you effectively want to make love to - makes you buy her all kinds of presents, asks you to deposit substantial sums of hard-earned money to her bank account, tricks you into marrying her in a wedding parlor and consequently runs off with all your cash, leaving you tied to the bed of the hotel suite you paid for. Then you decide to feed another woman, a security guard, some Spanish Fly to get her turned on, only to watch her immediately speed off to her boyfriend. And let's not forget all the double entendres gone horribly wrong. With the security guard, you try to break the ice with a "Hey sweetheart, what's your sign?" only to hear "Exit!" fired back. And when you ask your future wife if you can "join" her in the dance temple where you meet her, she retorts, "Why, am I coming apart?" Women certainly don't take any crap in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.
