Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (1987)

Preliminary: I was really unsure whether I wanted to give this an earnest try, given the concept behind it, but wow I love the colors of the geometric shapes at the start.

I hope this is just a goofy, adult adventure that doesn't get problematic... Annoyed with the starting questions but I suppose it's a way to weed out the kids back then. And lol I went through hell to figure out how I turn the Sound On, and uh, I regreted that real quick. Not a big fan of Apple II's sound abilities. Not a lot of Sound going on, indeed, but I suppose I should've known.. this is first and foremost a text adventure brought to life a la usual Sierra style like King's Quest... just a very different setting... and indeed, the setting is what I was loving so far. The Look had a great feeling to it, even since the Atari days I've always been a sucker for pinks and Golden Hour colors (Activision! That Venetian Blinds game lol) and

Look: 8/10 Welp, it's the end of my first play session, on my way to the casino, and so far so good still holding my interest! The Look is a big part of that! This nighttime Taxi scene gave a nice Feel, not to mention the commentary on the lack of public transportation in many American cities.

The depth was well-presented and the Casino looked nice too, GTA Vice City vibes ha

Sound: -/10 Kind of unfair to rate it but yeah, if I were to rate it, it would be very low.

Play: 7/10 My expectations for gameplay have certainly gone up since the original King's Quest, and this still feels very much like the first KQ. Still, something endearing about that simple adventure type of Play, so clearly made my text adventure people just bringing it more to life. It was still slow and clunky like the KQs. However, I was surprised the staircase went better than usual lol inadvertent clunky directional controls were half the battle of Below the Root and early KQs etc. I didn't even have to figure out how to do diagonal movement, though I should. Maybe they managed a slight improvement to the controls then? (Especially since I had it at 2x CPU speed)

Anyway, when it comes to the text adventure aspects--the parser and the dialogue--I am surprised that I'm finding myself reading every word! The humor was good without being overly wordy or over-the-top. Like the Ring part, I won't spoil it but it was cute, terse, and entertaining. Oh and like when you make a mistake, unlike most adventure games that give you an irritating response, in this one you "bang your head repeatedly on the glass" when you forget to open the window first, etc. lol. Too often humorous early adventure games try too hard with it. I also love, like always with adventure games, seeing my score go up over time. But dang, 222 in total?! This may be a little long for me to push through this old school adventure gameplay, when I have Castlevania II and the first Final Fantasy coming up, but hopefully it keeps my attention!

On my 2nd play session, I was grateful the slot machines (which is always a frustrating, tedious addition to an adventure game, yet so prominent lol) had a simplified system to betting rather than having to re-type a bunch. (but unsurprisingly, the betting mechanic sucked and was a tedious addition to the game)

Pro-tip: play the Blackjack, not the Slots like most people suggest. Sure you can abuse the save feature more there, but my goodness was that tedious, and 250 is so much. I may stop playing if this takes much longer... I'm at 184.... They should've increased the maximum bet... anyway, at least Blackjack is fun. 1987 computer game Slots, not so much. Okay yea dont make my mistake, it's way more fun to do Blackjack instead of Slots, and it went way faster without even abusing saves.

Feel: 7/10 Fun discovering things for myself, like Pocket Lint in the Inventory lol. Lots of great things about this, namely the Look and humor. I was definitely worried about problematic things. So far, the basic premise of course is tacky, and I am very iffy about the "pimp" character, but so far it's not as bad as I expected (tbh, I expected to drop the game as soon as it started, judging by my experience with rapey 80s games so far.

Attachment: 7/10 Welp, if only they didn't include the need for a bunch of money to get maximum score. Betting in these early games is so slow and clunky and simply not fun. I almooooost quit but finally got to 250 thanks to pushing thru Blackjack, okay hopefully the adventure part makes up for it. That definitely dragged the game out unnecessarily. Welp and then I got irritated because I'm typing in the number on the side of the telephone outside the Quik-Mart, but it's not working right. Whatevs. Not worth working through it. Great Look, bad concept but not terribly executed, decent controls for an early Sierra adventure game, pretty good humor, and overall good gameplay but got tiresome in mid-game.

Completion: I think it was 38/222 or so, outside Quik-Mart trying to dial the 555-6969 number which awards you 2 points, but it wasn't working. Playtime: ~45 mins (huge chunk of that was gambling for the $250 lol)