Suit yourself

As I was working on my list of My Favorite Gaming Heroes I heard that the Leisure Suit Larry IP has been dusted off and is set to make a return. And unlike the debacles that were Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, Larry creator Al Lowe has returned and in full creative control.

And whilst I would rather new IPs being developed I do find something to like in the way that this is going: With the man who created Larry in charge it seems a welcome opportunity to erase the aforementioned duds from history. The idea that Larry is back in the hands of the man who made him and away from the people who made the terrible games is also a triumph of IP everywhere.
In addition to this announcement comes the news that the previous Larry titles will be remade and a new Larry title will be on it's way. Now normally, I would frown at the idea of remakes but here I don't mind... just as long as they:
a) take the opportunity to fix some of the errors and problems from the originals
b) maintain a degree of graphical/animation quality akin to LSL7 and
c) retain the LSL4 joke.

But there does arise a potential problem: Larry is essentially a product of his time. In the late eighties and the early nineties, anyone who was going out of their way to get laid was seen as creepy, pitiful, pathetic and a loser. Thus much of the fun from the games stemmed from Larry's efforts failing in various ways and the character himself getting his just desserts.
Nowadays, that idea has been challenged with both the arrival of the nerd/geek subculture and the notion that anyone trying to get laid isn't a loser but more along the lines of a diamond in the rough (ie American Pie). Thus the Larry of yesterday is going to come across as being completely unlikable in the era of today.
There may be a way around this problem with Larry being rewritten from a smarmy perv to a lovable, luckless, 'tomorrow's another day'-esque character. But will it work? How much can one tamper with a workable formula before the potential buyers start smelling BS?

Personally I would like to see what becomes of this plan: I can hope that some of the flaws in the original games be fixed (seriously, some of the puzzles tend to kill the gameplay horribly) but it would be interesting to see a character get a new lease of life in an industry where such things are rare. Has there ever been a character from a previous generation go under a dramatic revamp and work in a completely new generation?


















Okay, apart from this guy....