Sierra management was in turmoil after Ken and Roberta got bought out by CUC. The new management tried to get me to design my next game without a contract, saying “we’ll work it out later.” I may not be great at business, but I knew enough not to fall for a sucker deal like that. I refused to flesh out the design until we reached an agreement on terms. They didn’t want to negotiate, so I left.
But in my mind (which, of course, is far different from a finished design), here’s where I saw the game going:
After Larry was taken away in the spaceship at the end of Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!, he awoke to find himself in what he considered “heaven” — a world of disco balls, 70s music, and beautiful women who constantly wanted him to make love to them. What’s not to like?
These amazonian warrior women were from a superior civilization light years away. Long ago, their modern technology enabled them to live forever, which meant they could no longer have children without overpopulating their planet into disaster. That made the male of their species redundant. Because the women were the warriors, they killed off all their males.
Now they wanted to expand to other planets and for that, they needed to increase their numbers. For that, they needed males. But where to find them? Why not look on the planet they chose to conquer first: Earth? Picking up transmissions from the PMS Bouncy, they learned of the “Thygh’s Man Trophy” Competition to choose the sexiest man alive. Who better to kidnap to breed with their women than the World’s Sexiest Man?
Besides, after hundreds of years without sex, they were horny as hell!
But there was no way they could allow Larry to see their alien bodies and hideous faces. So, via the always handy anal probe, they discovered Larry’s true feelings, what he liked and disliked. Then they brainwashed him into seeing his surroundings, and them, as that. Thus, their ship appeared to Larry to be a wonderful casino, disco, spa, etc., while the ugly alien females appeared to him as ideal women. Their spastic noises and clicks became 70s disco music inside Larry’s brain.
But eventually, he would learn the truth: they were using him to father a generation of children that only looked human; a battalion of aliens human enough to blend in on Earth before taking control. When he escaped their mind control, he realized: he had to figure out the truth, find a way to stop them, and literally save the planet!
Of course, all this would be done in a satirical way, while poking fun at the thousands of other games that have used that theme before.
Would it have worked? I think so. But now — we’ll never know.
More from Al Lowe:
At the end of 1998, while Sierra and I were negotiating a contract for Leisure Suit Larry 8: Lust in Space, Sierra cancelled production. They soon informed me they had no plans to ever make the game. Years later, they produced some games with the Larry name without me.
But during those months of stalling, Jason Zayas (lead animator on Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail and KQ8: Mask of Eternity), was hard at work creating a 3-D Larry.
While only a first draft, this prototype gives you a rough idea of how 3-D Larry would have looked and sounded. While this crude test is only a movie, in the real game you would have been able to move the camera up, down, and all around the scene, changing angles and distance at will.
So, enjoy the only fragment of Leisure Suit Larry 8 that you will ever get a chance to see!
See 21 seconds unseen outside of Sierra, in wide-screen color, with animation created by Jason Zayas, original music composed by David Henry, and the voice of Leisure Suit Larry, Jan Rabson.