Leisure Suit Larry 1: In The Land of the Lounge Lizards, or LSL1, is one of the best remakes that Sierra has ever done. Not only will you play the game in 16-color EGA with sound coming through the beeper, but now you can experience Larry’s life in gorgeous 256-color VGA, complete with Sound Blaster support.

Like the original, you have to answer some questions after you are asked to enter your age. After you have entered it, the game attempts to mock you, and with the questions, if you don’t know an answer to a couple, you can press CTRL-ALT-X. However, the game then asks you a question that refers to the documentation that comes with the game box.

The plot of LSL1 is the same as in the original, where you have to meet up with three girls and seduce them, and the actions you’ll perform will be the same, but instead of typing GIVE ROSE TO GIRL to give the rose to the girl in the disco (duh), all you need to do is move your mouse cursor up the top of the screen, click the inventory icon, select the rose, exit the inventory, and finally give the rose to the girl. As well as using the inventory to give presents to characters, as well as the standard walk, talk, touch, and see icons, you also have the zipper icon. This is useful to get undress ready to screw women.

The jokes from the original LSL are still there, but even funnier this time. When you wait around in a location for a long time, the black dog from the original approaches you and if you have a SB, you can really hear him take a pee, and also when you buy a condom in the store, you also hear customers call Larry a pervert. Since this remake was made in 1991, it’s a real shame that Al Lowe didn’t include the “Bodily Function” keys, where you press one of the unused function keys (eg: F10) and it makes a revolting sound. Since LSL5 was made the same year, it had the bodily function keys, but not LSL1.

I like the graphics, because they have more detail, and the music is better compared to other Sierra remakes. I especially like the music where you’re travelling in a taxi. You can even chuck some money in the jukebox at Lefty’s Bar and select a song from the game in which you want to listen to, rather than just the theme song.

Apart from all this, everything is nearly the same. The way you have to travel by taxi between locations and pay the driver before getting out or die, the way you have to use a password to get in the bar’s backroom, and the way a thug will attack you if you wait too long in the alley. With the latter, you’re not being reconstructed by the good guys at Sierra. Instead, you are being turned to liquid and are sent through the tubes and are made from there.

The Bad

The same problems that exist in the original game exist here. For example, the fact that you have to win at slots at least thrice. I say it before but I’ll say it again: the further you go in the game, the more money you have to spend. And I really didn’t like pulling out the documentation every time the game asked me to refer to it to answer a question.

The Bottom Line

If you played this game and enjoyed it, then I encourage you to play the original game that was made back in 1987 just to see what every Sierra game was like when EGA cards were still around and sound cards didn’t exist. If you do, you may want to disable the CPU cache to get rid of the “Unable to initialize you’re music hardware” messages. Excellent sound and graphics. ****