Return to a time when horny videogames made you type: Leisure Suit Larry is now free

If you've never played Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, well, the truth is that it's probably too late now. What seemed risque in 1987 wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, and while no specific examples leap immediately to mind I am reasonably confident that there are at least a couple of jokes in there that have not aged well.

Still, it is a landmark videogame—one of the groundbreaking adventures that established Sierra as a powerhouse in the early days of PC gaming—and so if you've never played it but kind of want to, now you can jump in without spending a penny courtesy of a giveaway at Indiegala.

The name of the game is simple: You, Larry Laffer, are a short, balding, middle-aged man with terrible taste in clothing who has recently moved to the skeevy city of Lost Wages. And now it's time for a night on the town, beginning at Lefty's Bar and ending, hopefully, with the woman of your dreams.

Bear in mind that this is the truly OG version of Leisure Suit Larry and not one of the updates, so it uses a text parser for input—no mouse here—and it's delivered as a direct download rather than a key. You'll also die, a lot, without warning and for stupid reasons. It's definitely an old-time experience.

Still, you can't beat the price, and if you have fun with it but wish it was just a little bit more modern, that's an option too: For $10, GOG has the VGA remake along with most of the games in the series in its Leisure Suit Larry package, while the $5 Reloaded version on the Microsoft Store is an update with brand-new graphics, audio, scenes, and jokes.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.