Hack83.Hack the Leisure Suit Larry Games

Hack 83. Hack the Leisure Suit Larry Games

Find hidden nude scenes, easter eggs, and secret tricks in the risqu adventure series .

By the late eighties, graphic adventure gamescartoonish quests filled with brain-bending puzzleswere well on their way to becoming one of the most popular game categories available for the exploding personal computer market. Game publisher Sierra On-Line, having pioneered the genre with the ubiquitous King's Quest, continued to grow the genre with titles like Police Quest, Space Quest, and a game called Leisure Suit Larry In The Land of the Lounge Lizards.

This groundbreaking game, filled with bawdy humor and adult situations, followed the adventures of a perpetually dateless, out-of-style, balding discohall getabout named Larry Laffer as he attempted to work his sleazy yet lovable self into the hearts of beautiful women. With each new entry in the popular series, Larry's creator Al Lowe and his team of misfits hid all sorts of surprises , from more revealing artwork of the games' leading ladies to tricks and cheats that let the impatient player bypass some difficult moments.

In this hack, I'll run down some of the best tricks and secrets hidden in the Leisure Suit Larry games. Just be warned that if you don't already have the games, tracking down original copies can be extremely difficult as Sierra no longer publishes them. Try searching the online auction site eBay (http://www.eBay.com) to find the games; add the phrase -magna to the end of your search string to filter out the recent Leisure Suit Larry game, Magna Cum Laude, from the results.

If you've got some classic Larry games but are having trouble getting them to run properly on your computer, try some of the solutions offered in [Hack #69] .

9.4.1. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Larry's very first outing took him to scenic Lost Wages in search of romantic fulfillment. Shockingly, he sort of found it.

9.4.1.1. Defeat the "Age Quiz".

To prevent impressionable young persons from getting into the first Larry game, the humorous "age test" shown in Figure 9-15 was administered before the game began .

Figure 9-15. Leisure Suit Larry's age quiz

Questions mostly concerned items of topical interest circa 1987, the sort of things adults would know but kids wouldn't. The only problem is that nowadays, even the over-18 crowd would wrestle with questions like:

Who has not been a U. S. Attorney General ?

1. John Mitchell

2. Sam Shepard

3. Ramsey Clark

4. Herbert Browner

The answers to all of the age-test questions are available on Al Lowe's web site (http://www.allowe.com/Larry/1questions.htm). But there is another trick you can use, left in by programmers sick of answering their own questions every time they felt like starting a game up. Press Alt-X to bypass the quiz entirely. In the re-released 1991 VGA graphics version of the game, you must press Ctrl-Alt-X to get around the quiz.

9.4.1.2. Turn off the hot tub bubbles .

Near the end of the game, you'll get into a hot tub with Eve (see Figure 9-16), Larry's dream woman . While you're chatting with her, try typing in the command turn off bubbles to see what happens. In the point-and-click VGA version of the game, you'll see a button on the hot tub that you can press to achieve the same goal. We'd show you the results, but this is a family publication.

Figure 9-16. Hmif only that water level were a little lower

9.4.2. Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking For Love (In Several Wrong Places)

Larry starts out in his first sequel living with Eve, but she soon kicks him out of the house. He sails away on a cruise ship to places unknown.

9.4.2.1. Bypass the copy protection.

Larry's second game featured no age test, but it did include a copy protection scheme that sought to prevent those who had not purchased the game legally from getting past the title screen.

In the game's manual were color pictures of sixteen cartoon beauties (okay, some of them were a little scary-looking), each with a phone number written beneath her portrait. Before the game could begin, you had to input the girl's phone number.

You can find pictures of all sixteen girls at Al Lowe's site (http://www.allowe.com/Larry/2women.htm), but where's the hack in that? Moreover, the pictures were designed such that if the manual were to be photocopied, it would be difficult to tell the black-and-white, blurry images apart. This had the unintended side effect of making it difficult to figure out the woman in question even with an original manual!

A better way to get past the copy protectionalthough it only works on version 1.002.000 of the softwareis to input Al Lowe's birthday as the last four digits of the number: 555-0724 .

9.4.3. Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti In Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals

You think that I'm making these titles up, but I'm not. In Larry 3 you alternated between playing as the man himself and his undercover-agent girlfriend Patti as they investigated mysterious happenings on Nontoonyt Island (say it out loud).

9.4.3.1. Defeat the age quiz (again).

Larry 3 brought back the dreaded Age Quiz, with questions designed to confound and stump any young child or innocent adult who dared fire up the Larry3.exe . This time around, you could still play the game if you failed the questions, but the game's naughtiness level would increase or decrease depending on how well you did. If you want to skip the quiz, press Ctrl-Alt-X and you'll be able to set the rudeness level. Set it all the way to 5 to enjoy the game as it was intended!

9.4.3.2. Get around the copy protection.

Larry 3 employed a novel means of copy protection. If you pirated the game, you would be able to play through the first few screens, thus giving you a taste of the full product. But you wouldn't be able to get very far without having the manual handy, as the maitre d' of the club (shown in Figure 9-17) requires a ticket number printed on a random page. If you input the wrong number, the game will end immediatelyhope you saved beforehand, butterfingers!

Since designer Al Lowe has provided a full list of the ticket numbers on his home page (http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm), I don't feel particularly bad about printing them in Table 9-1.

Figure 9-17. I'm guessing it's not 6

Table 9-1. The ticket numbers

Page	Ticket number
3	00741
5	55811
6	30004
8	18608
11	32841
12	00993
15	09170
18	49114
19	33794
22	54482

There is another bit of copy protection for which the manual is needed, but since it also constitutes a puzzle in the game that requires a bit of lateral thinking, I won't spoil it here. If you're stumped (or don't have the manual), check out the URL listed in the previous paragraph. (And while you're there, read the informational section about the design of the Nontoonyt jungle maze for some insight into a truly retro gaming hack!)

9.4.4. Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work

Wait a minuteLeisure Suit Larry 5? What happened to 4? If you play this adventure, you'll find out. Or not.

9.4.4.1. Bypass the copy protection (yet again).

Larry 5's copy protection works much the same way as Larry 3'syou'll be able to play a bit of the game, but you won't get far without the manual. This time, however, the copy protection isn't an easily- copied list of numbers. You have to enter in a series of meaningless symbols that coincide with an airport check-in computer's travel arrangements.

A large, easy-to-read image of the symbol list is available, again, at designer Al Lowe's site (http://www.allowe.com/images/L5cpyprot.gif).

9.4.4.2. See more of Chi Chi.

When you first meet the dental receptionist Chi Chi (shown in Figure 9-18) towards the end of Larry 5, you might be wishing that her uniform wasn't so expertly tailored. Clicking on the button using the "touch" cursor won't initially work, but if you're persistent and click her about seven times, you'll get some surprisingly risqu results.

Figure 9-18. Drat that pesky button

9.4.4.3. Find Leisure Suit Larry 4.

When you begin the game, walk over to the desk and pick up the xylophone. After you pop Chi Chi's buttons , use the mallet from the xylophone on the second cactus from the left in the office bathroom. Actually, I'm just kidding. There is no Larry 4, and no hack will ever uncover one!

9.4.5. Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up Or Slip Out!

Larry invades a health spa in Larry 6, which represented a return to form for the series after the disappointingly simple fifth installment. For the first time, the game saw an optional release on CD-ROM, which featured full voice acting.

9.4.5.1. Peek into the women's shower room.

This is one of the most infamous Easter eggs hidden in the Larry games. You can't get into the womens' showers, but you can see what lies inside. Go into the mens ' shower room and look on the wall for a discolored tile. Take it off the wall, look in the resultant hole, and a brief cutscene (that I cannot show you) will play automatically.

9.4.5.2. Take Cav's shirt.

Make absolutely sure to save your game before you attempt this Easter egg, as Cavthe buffed and physically imposing aerobics instructorwill literally kill Larry if he dares to take her shirt away. After you get her membership card (this is a necessary part of the game), you can remove her shirt if you try enough times (like with Chi Chi). Just don't come crying to me when you're dead.

9.4.6. Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love For Sail!

For the beautifully redesigned Larry 7, a CD-only game with animation rivaling television cartoons and all sorts of new features, the design team included several difficult-to-find but highly amusing Easter eggs. In fact, it's possible to see practically every female in the game (see Figure 9-19) in a less-than -clothed state.

Figure 9-19. If only there were some way to "push" those plants out of the way

Many of the eggs revolve around use of the mostly optional text-entry system, which was rejected as obsolete after Larry 3 but brought back because of the wide variety of commands (and resultant jokes) it allowed for. Since the methods for performing the Easter eggs are lengthy and complicated (and available at Al Lowe's web site, of course: http://www.allowe.com/Larry/7eggs.htm), I won't go into the details. Suffice it to say that they really pulled out all the stops!

As I mentioned earlier, there is another Larry game now available for PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox, called Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. There aren't too many Easter eggs in the game, since it is more of a collection of minigames and less of a puzzle-solving title. But if you look closely, you'll be able to re-enact the famous shower sequence in full 3D. And you might even see some of the girls from Larry 2 in the sorority house.