It helps to think of the whole dating sim genre, and its various subgenres and spin-offs, as basically Harlequin romance novels for nerdy men.įor all of this, blame Larry. Other spin-offs include Hatoful Boyfriend, a dating sim starring pigeons, and Angela Washko’s brilliant anti-dating sim The Game: The Game, a scathing satire in which players try to fend off aggressive pickup artists in a bar. These were usually Flash-based, peaked in the 2000s, crudely animated and sometimes involved furries. There are also a number of sub-genres, including sex games, where the player attempts to get someone to climax. The genre is male dominated, but not always ( Boyfriend Maker), and mostly unpopular outside of Japan (save for the Larry series and sections of Stardew Valley). The actual gameplay varies - some are simple choose-your-own-adventure games others are conversation-based, in which a player has to navigate complex dialogue trees and successfully flirt yet others are essentially puzzle games with soft and hardcore pornographic elements. It gradually became one of the best-selling erotic adventure games of all time, and it remains one of the few dating simulations to ever crack into the mainstream in the U.S.įor those unfamiliar, dating sims are, broadly, games where the player guides a character on a romantic quest. (See for yourself: It’s available to play for free over at the Internet Archive.) But this didn’t hurt sales.
In fact, it became one of the most pirated games of all time, and due to a virus hidden in a few blackmarket copies, caused widespread problems in European banking terminals.Ĭonsidering its premise, the game itself was surprisingly tame. It also inspired blatant ripoffs, even as recently as 2004 with a game called Fuck Quest II. But because of word-of-mouth, sales eventually picked up, and it became a bestseller, resulting in a series of popular sequels. The game was an initial flop, largely because major retail stores like RadioShack were hesitant to sell an “adult” game. To young boys at the time, it had the mystique of a shrink-wrapped Playboy in a convenience store. Since most games then leaned heavily into cartoon violence, Larry’s sexual innuendo stood out. It was a graphic adventure game first released in 1987 with the primary goal of helping its protagonist get laid.
If you happened to flip through a PC gaming magazine in the late 1980s or early 1990s, you would’ve probably seen an ad for a game called Leisure Suit Larry, or one of its many sequels.
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