Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Larry and Patti investigate missing floppies and subliminal messages.
Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work is a 1991 graphical adventure from Sierra On-Line for Amiga, MS-DOS, and Macintosh. As the fourth Leisure Suit Larry game, it was the series debut for 256-color graphics and a fully icon-based interface. Its title is deceptive, since there is no Leisure Suit Larry 4. The next game in the series, Leisure Suit Larry 6, arrived in 1993. A Windows-compatible version was released on Steam in 2017.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- Sierra On-Line
- Director
- Al Lowe; Bill Davis (creative)
- Producer
- Guruka Singh Khalsa
- Designer
- Al Lowe
- Programmer
- Brian K. Hughes
- Artist
- Jane Cardinal
- Composer
- Craig Safan
- Series
- Leisure Suit Larry
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
The game expands on the multi-character feature of the previous installment, with control alternating between Larry and Patti. A new "Zipper" icon allows the character to perform an erotic action. Difficulty is greatly reduced; neither character can die or become trapped, and losing is impossible. Many collected items are optional, affecting only the final score and alternative solutions.
Plot
The absence of a Leisure Suit Larry 4 forms the premise: Julius Biggs has stolen the "missing floppies" and caused Larry Laffer to become amnesiac. Larry awakens working as a videotape technician at PornProdCorp, a sleazy entertainment company. His boss, Silas Scruemall, sends him across America with a hidden camera to record three finalist women for the show America's Sexiest Home Videos. Meanwhile, FBI Inspector Desmond recruits pianist Passionate Patti for an undercover operation investigating organized crime infiltration of the entertainment industry through subliminal messages in music. Larry's journey takes him to New York City (Michelle Milken), Atlantic City (Lana Luscious), and Miami (Chi Chi Lambada). Patti investigates Des Rever Records in Baltimore and K-RAP Radio in Philadelphia. Both investigations converge on Julius, who controls both the music infiltration and the television production company. Larry lands a plane safely after an incident, is greeted as a hero, and is invited to the White House by George H. W. Bush, where he reunites with Patti.
Development
Lowe and Sierra president Ken Williams explored turning Larry into an online multiplayer adventure. In early 1991, work began on Leisure Suit Larry 4 as the first Sierra Network online adventure, with custom modem and server code for avatars and real-time interaction. Technical roadblocks from dial-up speeds and graphics bandwidth led to its abandonment. Lowe joked the next game would be "Larry 5" instead of 4, adopting the in-joke that Larry 4 never existed. Larry 5 was developed using the new Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI1) supporting 256-color VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface; every scene was redrawn in VGA. The text parser was replaced with a mouse-driven icon bar, making puzzles easier. The team added puzzles and the "Zipper" icon to compensate. Sierra surveys showed many players never finished games due to difficulty, so Larry 5 was designed with easier puzzles and no deaths or dead ends. Production was led by Guruka Singh Khalsa, with Lowe as writer/director and Bill Davis as creative director. The game was completed in 1991 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh, and released in September 1991.
Reception
Within a month of release, the game moved 125,000 units. Al Lowe noted that each Leisure Suit Larry title, including this fifth one, exceeded 250,000 sales. By March 1996, the series had sold over 1.4 million copies combined, and the first five games together passed 2 million by the time Love for Sail! arrived. Computer Gaming World praised it as "a thoroughly enjoyable game."
More in Sierra Entertainment Games of the 1990s
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