As you may have seen in a previous post, I’m playing through Codemasters/Team17’s take on Leisure Suit Larry, Box Office Bust.  I’m about 5 hours in and encountered more irritatingly executed mechanics than what I’d seen when I first wrote my impressions.  However, much like Magna Cum Laude, though the “gameplay” itself is kinda lame, the overall experience, writing, and humor pretty much make up for those shortcomings to where I’m totally willing to turn a blind eye to them.  I still prefer MCL’s art style and innovative dialogue system, but in BOB (if you know the right response), you can listen to all the wrong answers before moving to the next level of the dialogue tree.  Unfortunately, if you do get the right answer earlier than you’d hope, loading an earlier save will almost certainly set you back quite a long ways from your current point, both in playtime and in distance.  I hope that whoever writes the (hopefully) inevitable FAQ with all spoken dialogue writes in the ad-libbed VO versions rather than just transcribe the subtitles.

Anyway…

I thought I’d kick off the first in this “good parts of bad games” series with one of my favorite examples, the aforementioned dialogue system from Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude.

Rather than selecting dialogue options from a list of possible responses, conversations play out in real-time accompanied and affected by a mini-game.  At the bottom of the screen you control a swimming sperm who must collect or avoid icons as they fly past.  There are essentially three “icon lanes,” but your sperm avatar moves freely up and down and is not locked into just the three distinct top/middle/bottom lanes.  It plays out sort of like the speeder bike section in Battletoads.  Icons are colored red or green, and depending on which color you hit, the girl’s heart meter will gradually either decrease or fill up, respectively.  The goal, of course, is to end the conversation with a full heart meter.  

A meter along the bottom border of the mini-game window shows you how far along you are in the current conversation.  If it’s early in the conversation, you might be tempted to go ahead and spend the first part goofing off and choosing the “wrong” icon and just play catch up later.

There are two other special detrimental icons, a fart/belch cloud that decreases the heart meter, and a beer glass that adds input delay to your movement of the little sperm avatar.  Performance in many other areas are affected by drunkenness, and you can decrease it after imbibing too much by taking a piss wherever you like, just be careful not to let the wrong person see you.  On the other side, there are green hearts that instantly boost the heart meter.

The best part is this: the conversation is a mad lib! Aside from the two special icons listed above, everything else picked up directs the words that come out of Larry’s mouth and can, at times, even branch conversations into different topics for a few lines.  Often times the shape of the icon itself can give you a clue about the nature of what Larry will say. There’s a note for music, a hot dog for food, a sombrero for something “Spanish,” a devil-horned smiley for something naughty, boobs for something breast-related, and tons of surprising and wacky others.

Yes, this mini-game still serves as a gate in your progress through the campaign, and in later conversations you’ll need to summon your old Battletoads skills to avoid getting your sperm so drunk that you can’t avoid all the bad red icons.  Thankfully, though, this is a prime example of rewarding failure with entertainment and replay value.

See below for an example of early conversations with the first girl, Sally Mae.

Leisure Suit Lary: Magna Cum Laude was developed by High Voltage Software and published by Sierra Entertainment.  Released October 4, 2004, for PS2, Xbox, and PC.