Sierra, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and more with Al Lowe | Retro Tea Break

[@RMCRetro]

Thanks for watching and a special thank you to Al Lowe (allowe.com). I've relaxed the time limit in response to your feedback, I'll still invite guests for a short chat because it makes it easier for me to book guests but if they have more to share just like Al then we'll keep the clock ticking! I LOVED chatting with Al and I hope you enjoy his story. Neil - RMC

[@ryanyoder7573]

RetroManCave I’m glad you let him continue. Thanks. The stories of these pioneers are important to preserve.

[@cheaterman49]

Thank you so much for making the clock longer! Al is a fantastic person, it's really impressive how humble he is with regards to his huge contribution to the growth of the industry! Thanks for having him, and more generally for doing this series, it's really great!

[@Monkey_SK]

That's certainly a tea break with at least three ginger nut biscuits worth of content right there, great stuff!

[@nfijef]

Thanks Neil, if they wanna be done, let 'em, but if they wanna keep goin, let 'em! :);)

[@MontieMongoose]

Thank you Mr. Lowe for all the memories. I poured many hours into Police Quest as a kid.

[@Sharklops]

Same here. It always felt like among my friends the King's Quest and Space Quest games get all the glory but give me Police Quest any day. If you want to scratch your itch, you can play some of these online at sarien.net/

[@brserralheiro]

same. Al Lowe is one of my lifetime heroes.

[@musiclabmn]

Al Lowe and Roberta Williams are my 80’s and 90’s adventure game hero’s. Spent MANY hours back in my childhood playing every Sierra game, but especially Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and King’s Quest.

[@MikePlemmons]

That was a great interview. Sierra's hostile take over broke my heart. I had lots of years of enjoyment playing many of their games. I really loved their magazine and always wished I could have used their online service.

[@dragonslayer9671]

And now they have gone out of business

[@HebaruSan]

LSL3's menu taught me the word "expletive." Thanks for everything, Al.

[@SchizoMelody]

I learned "prophylactic" from the original, at the tender age of 8.

[@MegaGrawp]

@@SchizoMelody Wow yeah this is precisely where I learned it too.

[@NixFanBoy007]

@@SchizoMelody Haha, same. I knew how to spell it before I knew how to pronounce it 🤣

[@diondewet8522]

Of all the early Sierra greats, I enjoy listening to Al the most. His humour and friendly nature really comes through.

[@LaFaJe]

Psst, Ken sent me....

[@SchizoMelody]

Scott me up, Beamie!

[@googlehomemini2059]

It takes leather balls to play rugby?😂

[@BobbyOxygen]

Al Lowe is every nerd's favourite uncle :) Cool that you got to chat with him.

[@MP-uk1yc]

Amazing to see Al still going strong, one of the few developers i knew by name and loved his work.

[@Dorelaxen]

Oh, man, Al is SO cool. LSL is one of my all time favorite series of games (along with the rest of the Sierra catalog), and getting to hear Al talk about this stuff is great. Thanks a lot for this one!

[@ScottDuensing]

I was lucky enough to spend most of a day with Al a couple years ago. He's every bit as nice and jovial in person as he appears in video. Just a fantastic guy with an endless supply of stories. :-) And, yes, I paid for my copy of Larry. (I worked in a software store at the time and even sold a copy to... a priest!)

[@DarrenMcCowan280470]

A true industry legend. I’m sure it must have been somewhat frustrating to only have the time to scratch the surface of his memories. Definitely someone that could probably fill a feature length documentary with his industry insights and stories and still leave you wanting more. Great work - many thanks.

[@Mark-yn4vl]

I got to meet Al Lowe at Dragoncon in Atlanta Georgia in 2017. What a guy! I told him how my friends and I when we were about 11 would sneak and play Leisure Suit Larry since it was considered "risque" back in the day. He loved it! I also told him that I considered Police Quest the favorite of my "Quest series". He was so much fun to talk to and very grateful for the fans. I asked him if he would ever do another Leisure Suit Larry. He said "Well I would like to think Larry is retired like me, and enjoying the high life with the ladies!" I had him sign a Leisure Suit Larry T-Shirt and it's framed on my wall.

[@Dreadpirateflappy]

Sierra games were my childhood, played all of them (apart from quest of glory for some reason) A lot of the humour went over my head in the larry games, but I still loved them.

[@sgtunix]

Thanks for making this! I enjoyed it tremendously, only wished it was 2 hrs long. Al’s anecdotes are funny

[@drooghead]

Leisure Suit Larry was the reason I bought an IBM compatible machine. I was previously very happy with my CP/M machine.

[@QuaaludeCharlie]

I Still Play my Leisure Suit Larry for Tandy and a PC Version . fun Game :) QC

[@cheaterman49]

Fantastic! Thanks so much for making the clock longer! If I'm not mistaken, Al also made some fantastic music on Frontier: Elite II (I know I always ramble about that game, sorry :-s) - I didn't know he was so very much the original author of Leisure Suit Larry! I didn't hear so much about Police Quest to be honest, maybe I was just too young and didn't get to enjoy it at its prime. Thanks again!

[@RetroCrunch]

I remember me and my sister sneaking downstairs late at night to play Leisure Suit Larry after dad went to bed. What a fun game. We were about 9 yrs old. ha. Thank you Al, for my formidable years.. :)

[@Octavi_Navarro]

This was an awesome interview! Thank you both for this.

[@RMCRetro]

You're welcome thanks for taking the time to watch

[@ArmstrongArcade]

Thank you for the cast! What a good dude Al Lowe is, and he certainly has brought happiness to millions of people.

[@Herr.P]

Such a likeable guy Al is and his games are great.

[@Colin_Ames]

What an entertaining fellow! Excellent interview. I bought Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest 1 for my 286 PC, in 1988 or 1989, I don’t remember which. Thoroughly enjoyed both games, and even got my wife to play, which was an achievement.

[@mUbase]

HE WAS THERE!!! Superb interview. All upwards from a SOL 20!! LSL was soooo funny. Thanks Neil. x

[@psyjax2]

Great Interview! Really enjoyed this one.

[@JacobFoshee]

Thanks!

[@asgerms]

Sounds like the rise and fall of Sierra deserves a movie; or a serious documentary.

[@oceania68]

So that is what happened to Sierra, I always wondered where they went. shame, I paid for their games back in the day. Good to see Al still going strong. Perhaps you and Al could write a game called Retro Man Cave Tea Time Shenanigans or something like that.. It'd be cool.

[@tweakpc]

Thank you both for the interesting interview.

[@TofersCarTales]

A HUGE part of my childhood. Thanks SO much Mr. Lowe! You are truly a legend and its so great to see this.

[@GuybrushThriftweed]

Thanks a lot Mr Lowe for giving me so much fun playing your games as a kid!!!

[@lochmarnegoat9812]

Thanks Al for all the great memories. And what a great interview.

[@ratspike8017]

I have the Remade Leisure Suit Larry (paid in full), and am about 3/5 way through it... I recommend it as it is a loving update. Then I can make my way through Larry 2 through 7 (all downloaded from GOG). I have been aware of these games since about 1990, so this was a true gem of an interview. Another brilliant video...

[@computersforeveryone2598]

Ratspike Too bad GOG didn’t include Larry 4, the best in the series by far!

[@lordmuaddib]

Al Lowe's the man! i could listen to him for hours!

[@funghazi]

I met Al when he came to MAGFest a few years back, he's the type of guy you never want to stop talking with.

[@MegaGrawp]

Even more chill than I imagined. Lol the girl's volleyball coach.

[@drooghead]

To this day my now adult kids know the password to anything when challenged is "Ken sent me".

[@ricardobornman1698]

Ahh, the legend. Many thanks Mr Lowe.

[@doalwa]

Fond memories of laying Larry 5..we had a pretty cool magazine here in Germany in the mid 90s called Bestseller Games. They rereleased some pretty successful PC titles accompanied by a walkthrough in a magazine format, I got to play some great adventure games thanks to that publication. Larry 5 was one of them, those were the days 😁 The other day I checked what those magazines are going for on EBay...needless to say, my stupid teenage brain tossed all those mags in the trash 😔

[@98of99]

Lovely to see the wonderful Al Lowe, thank you Neil!

[@detectingretro6313]

What a legend. Used to email each other a lot back in the late 90s to discuss Larry 😆

[@DubiousEngineering]

I loved a bunch of Sierra games! ... cracking tea break chat!

[@DieWeltIstSchlecht]

I like him so much! He is such a nice guy!

[@homelate1306]

That man is a legend! Thank you for all the fun I had as a kid with your games mr. Al Lowe! Great interview RMC!

[@MatHelm]

Never played it as I was out trying to get laid at the time.. But I did mange to play all the way through Space Quest III, and started IV. And I do remember the warm feeling of quality I'd always feel when that Sierra logo would pop up as a game loaded...

[@BirdFluJapan]

I bought the pc collection 1-6 with the bonus mini casino games thing. 4 was missing. Unsure why. ;)

[@nickwallette6201]

I heard they lost the floppies. :-D

[@BirdFluJapan]

@@nickwallette6201 It came on CD! ^-^

[@samuelschwager]

Good memories!

[@interghost]

Got to love Al Lowe. Always does a good interview!

[@NixFanBoy007]

I was all of about 8 or 9 years old when I first played Larry games on my dad's old work computers. Dad was a trainer at his work, and was teaching his co workers how to use computers. As such, he had come across games which he felt allowed employees become comfortable with using this new tech in the 80's. I'll never forget playing the sierra games on this old monochrome laptop. Those games taught me a love of gaming. Space Quest, Police Quest, Kings Quest and Larry. The first games I ever played, and I played the h3ll out of them. I still can complete them from start to finish from memory. Larry held such a great place in my memory. My pure little 9 year old mind was so rocked by this dirty, yet funny as h3ll game. I remember having my friends crowd around me when we would finally crack the questions in Larry 1. We thought it was the s3xiest thing to see the low res h00ker looking back at in Lefty's back room. Over my life, I've collected numerous games, but nothing will ever replace those old Larry games. I still have some of my original floppies for those old Sierra games. Thank you for everything, Al. You really are such a pivotal part of my life, and I remember them being almost the equivalent of finding dirty magazines. To this day, my parents and I are still thrilled whenever we find anything Larry related.

[@brserralheiro]

I played the Sierra Quest games if I remember well in 1986 when I was 14. Back then I owned an IBM clone 8086 It had two floppy drives, designated names A and B, later I changed to an 80286 AT clone I assembled myself. with more RAM, 320K ! Then I purchased extended memory, to add up to some amazing 640K RAM, wow! No Windows, just DOS, or Unix. I opted for DOS that was more common in my area. Then came the Hard Disk, don't remember but a few MB. That is why hard drives in Windows are called Drive C. I was learning to program ( now called to code) in Basic, Pascal, and later C, as a hobby. So much time passed, now I own a 12 core (24 logical) 2x Xeon CPU 32GB RAM, 18GB GPU video card with dozens of cores, that is already quite obsolete! Unbelievable for me who came from cassette recorder on a TK-83 computer from the Elementary School Computer classes in 1983. This interview recalled that the computer club from the American School I was studying had some old PC donations like Al Lowe mentioned. Now I don't use even as low as 25% of my PC resources, even using CuBase DAW for Music Recording. ( I have loved CuBase since 1989. But that is another story) This is quite a nostalgic game for me. I also played King's Quest, Police Quest and SQ 2. I have recently found it online in a DOS BOX web sandbox, please allow me to share the link to it. @t Ken Berta, who owned Sierra, and super-programmers Murphy and Lowe were my heroes. @t​ @t Thank you for this video, it brought me back memories of my teenage years... Al Lowe will always be one of my heroes! I have not played any games since SQ II. My crafts , Music and programming (I still call it that way) take all my time. I have just learned that Lowe took that route, from Music teaching to computer programming. First Programming was my hobby, and Music was my job. But soon Money sang louder and things inverted. Now, two decades later, I am trying to say each software development project will be my last, that I will only teach and play Music from now on. I already have the tools I need to be comfortable, like a fully loaded home studio and a big family of instruments, more that I need. This year I was going to retire from software development but this contagion delayed my plans. There are absolutely no gigs or Music classes, just code. Bored I guess when I stop IT for good, that is when I will enjoy software programming (coding) again. Now, building software is so boring. Many thanks to Al Lowe and this channel for this video. EOF

[@AtariLegend]

The man, the legend...in the cave! Awesome...

[@cyrus649]

I wish he could made LSL8, but Im happy for all he had made :)

[@HebaruSan]

Al Lowe: Things were so primitive we had software on cassette! Euro retro computing fans: _blush_

[@98of99]

Software on cassettes weren’t really a thing in the US. By the time computers came into the general public view they all had floppy drives. Nothing against our Euro friends, it’s just how it was for us.

[@jaras1969]

Loved Leisure Suit Larry. And Sierra´s games in general. I still have a good handfull of Sierra games lying around, only i don´t have anything to run them on.... Maybee it´s time to go hunting in the piles of old PC parts i´ve got stached away, and build me a retro PC again? :)

[@PierreVonStaines]

No chuffin' way? Al Lowe?! To quote a line from the 'Ambassador Reception' - "Monsieur, with these Ferrero Rocher's you are really spoiling us!"

[@BdR76]

19:15 First beta testers? Ackshually! 🤓 There's a 1984 documentary "Commercial Breaks" where Ocean is testing the game Hunchback II at a local school to get feedback from some kids. However it wasn't as rigorously tested as Leisure Suit Larry. Al Lowe didn't even mention they logged unknown user inputs to the disks, which were sent back, which was pretty advanced for the time and probably helped the game a lot.

[@jovmilos]

Al Lowe, the legend. Less then a week ago I finished Leisure Suit Larry 2 for like millionth time 😀

[@larsbonnet17]

Did you get all the points?

[@Commander64]

Police Quest was pretty cool, loved this interview. This channel is consistently interesting.

[@haroof]

Al was the reason I begged my parents to buy me an Apple IIC. I saw the first Leisure Suit Larry at Electronics Boutique and just had to have it.

[@michalcz10]

That was a great interview. Al lowe seems to be very funny and kind person 😅 love him

[@root42]

BraSoft? What a fitting name...

[@queegfivehundred8197]

I did as I was told, as I'd never heard of the SOL-20 before ;-) I was born around the time Processor Technology went bankrupt, but from the mid 80s until late 94 the only computers we had at home were borrowed from a school during school holidays. Edit: finished watching now... great discussion as always.

[@jerryvr]

My childhood hero! This is so cool.. great video :)

[@RetroHoo]

I pretty much dropped everything when I saw the notification for this video fly by! Countless hours I spend trying to get through the Larry 1 questions before the start of the game...

[@seburo7024]

Me and my friend had a notepad where we wrote down all the questions and what we answered and if we were right or wrong. Did that for LSL2 as well, hours of hard work for some heavily pixelated naughtiness :)

[@RetroHoo]

@@seburo7024 right! 😂 You were much more structured than I was though. I remember bothering grown up's a lot with those questions.

[@SamuliTuomola_stt]

meanwhile you could've just pressed ctrl-alt-X. must've been one of those doh' moments for many the first time they heard it

[@RetroHoo]

@@SamuliTuomola_stt really LOL! In the none pirated version you could that? 😅

[@seburo7024]

Yeah I laughed my ass off when I found out 10 years or so later. We did learn a lot about american history though!

[@redknight4805]

Just finished Leisure Suit Larry 7 without a walkthrough. Damn! What a game! I so wish Al would come back and make a few more. Either way, if Al ever reads this, thank you for making some of the best adventure games ever! You made me laugh as a kid, but your jokes are even better now that I'm older. 👍

[@christophertadeo6120]

Imagine him talking in my head all those childhood years playing every Larry series... 😳. It just won't go away now. 😳

[@nosferadu]

I love Al Lowe!

[@SchizoMelody]

I don't know art... But I know what I like!

[@UVOS-z4q]

Slam Dunk! Awesome job man. Love the tea break!

[@Barabyk]

Loved it!

[@Rebelphoenix]

I still wish LSL 8 Lust in Space could have been made.

[@phyrr2]

LSL is a gem of a little world that I'm grateful for having been able to experience (started with #2 at age 11). It's too bad that #7 was overshadowed by other games of its time. Curse of Monkey Island was great but LSL 7 was amazing as well. It really put that same animated style to perfect use!

[@numbers9to0]

Ken sent me. I played Kings Quest on an Amiga (so many colors). A friend had a boring IBM PC with Microsoft DOS, and he played it in monocrome mode, so much für you can't play it with less than 16 colors.

[@Dukefazon]

Al Lowe seems so much fun! I'm thankful for his work for Sierra. I have a weird relationship with the Larry series, I don't know if I should be ashamed or be proud that I like the series. The 2nd game was a bit hard, the 3rd game was really hard and felt odd, the 5th game was too easy. The 1st and 6th game are the best, I love how Larry looks in 6, the setting, puzzles and graphics are great in that game. I'm not a fan of turning Larry into a cartoon character, I think the series lost it's character with 7.

[@phyrr2]

There's a big divide between cell shading animation vs. pixel art so you're not alone. #6 was definitely more "magical" to me, and I started with #2. I personally love #7's style. It's just like Curse of Monkey island and others that followed suit. Styelized to a very 90's look and feel for the setting, which warms my heart as I was a teen then. But also the cell shading style is more timeless. Such art style is always in, even if not most popular. We will always have graphic novels, so this style can always be appreciated. Some might say it was too cartoonie which is also valid. Although I loved that too. If they didn't do that, LSL 7 may have ended up in 3D, and we know how that put the final nail in the coffin of adventure games by 2000. Monkey Island #4 (Escape) illustrates that perfectly. The only 3D one back then that did well was Grim Fandango because it was original style starting bottom up. But even then, most of its success was cult status years later. Regardless, games nowadays just don't capture our imagination and hearts anymore. Indie games can but they're a lot to comb through.

[@Dukefazon]

@@phyrr2 You summed up the stuff really well. I'd only add 1 thing and that the Sam&Max games from TellTale are really good. They are a bit formulaic but fun, especially season 2.

[@ScBliZ]

I played Larry 1 on my Brother in law's 286 in the early 90s... i didnt get very far, i think i couldn't get the champagne or whatever delivered to the room 🤣🤣 but i eventually bought the box collection 1-6 and then 7, only finished 6, 7 and the LSL1 VGA remake.. then got them all on GOG and the new remake of LSL1 on Steam.... ahhhhhh fun times 🥳😎😁😁

[@HeavyD6600]

Thanks, Al!

[@KaroKoenich]

I don't need to watch one second before hitting the like button.

[@Rebelphoenix]

Who doesn't like Al?

[@RetroMMA]

They count on you for that 'love'...

[@brserralheiro]

@@Rebelphoenix Lowe, Murphy, Ken and Berta are among my heroes.

[@kluzz]

Well worth the extended time limit. :)

[@wizofssp]

What a great Guy !

[@peterbrandt7911]

Could you please do a follow up? I'm sure he could easily talk for another hour without being boring for a second.

[@n3ffo]

Al says his game was the first that he knows was beta tested, and while it could well be true for PC games, it's not quite true for all games. Arcade games were regularly field tested during development (in actual arcades), the creator of Gauntlet (Ed Logg) talks about in a GDC post mortem. Atari also did focus groups and all that kind of nonsense. This was in the early 1980s.

[@MQsto]

And of course the legendary Infocom tested their games extensively. (Then again, they had internal testers, testing was not "outsourced" to gamers :-) )

[@wiiagent]

cool interview

[@jasont9294]

Does Al have an XPS 13? That webcam angle!

[@RMCRetro]

This was a phone on a music stand 😁 I've learned to accept that tea breaks will never be perfect productions but I'm just so appreciative of our guests time so anything goes

[@jasont9294]

RetroManCave it’s all good. Still enjoyed the video. Had all the LSL games on the Amiga back in the day. Cheers.

[@jamesowens7148]

I miss adventure games...

[@Commander64]

Check out the steam library, there is a lot of indy devs making some pretty decent anventure and point and click games. I highly reccomend Oxenfree.

[@jamesowens7148]

@@Commander64 You ment GOG, right? I refuse to buy from Steam and other non free platforms. T. Stallmanbot.

[@MarcoMugnatto]

Check AdventureGameFan8 channel on KZbin

[@MarcoMugnatto]

They are doing great on VR also

[@jamesowens7148]

@@MarcoMugnatto >multi part walkthroughs Why? I want reviews of obscure old games, not letsplays. Anyway, thanks. I'm stuck in the past I guess.

[@oestrek]

Hey Al I paid for the game multiple times and enjoyed them all. Thanks.....

[@jasonandrewwillford5267]

YEEEAH BABY!

[@phyrr2]

This is a ringtone on Zedge by the way! In ringtones, search for "Heres Dildo" exactly. No punctuation, so it's not "Here's" it's "Heres". Enjoy! I get funny looks for mine all the time, makes for an easy convo topic :P

[@donwald3436]

Hey, it's Art Sebastian!

[@RetroMMA]

The little hats pioneered porn and still do to this day - pretty much all MSM, music, TV shows, and big tech... entertainment in general. I know, it's an uncomfortable truth especially given that I own no less than 5 Sierria games including LSL for the Amiga. Slip? Love how he mentioned that they loved to "make themselves happy" - who is "themselves" and what does it mean? Hm.

[@kresimirsicel]

I love this guy!

[@chopschoppsta7197]

Marvellous !

[@tuanbe]

I must have been 10 years old getting a copy of LSL1. It was owned by a school friend’s older brother. We didn’t own an English dictionary at home so I went to the library just to find out what on earth was a prophylactic. Perhaps it was the naughty factor that made me interested in the game, as I hardly understood any of Larry’s dirty thoughts.

[@marklechman2225]

Living. Legend.

[@algerdlitvin2097]

Жадаю Элу доугiх год жыцьця!

[@theoldar]

It is stunning how few people watched this wonderful video.

[@herbiehusker1889]

Yeah, I can see why a lot of people pirated Larry. I didn't, but my dad did.

[@Herr.P]

Pretty standard at the time.

[@meloehaze]

Wait......thats not uncle Phil!!

[@anonamatron]

Did you pay for the games? I think I've bought multiples of a lot of the series by now. Back then I had some of the single games, and then bought all the series sets, and in some cases multiple series sets..... Proud owner of the Leisure Suit Larry Ultimate Pleasure Pack. Oh, and I started out playing these games on the Amiga, but definitely had Windows/Dos versions later on... I remember having a lot of trouble finding Freddy Pharkas in the late 90's and ended up getting it from ebay.

[@JohnPengo]

Al Lowe is our old big brother! too bad no one ever asks him why "Ken sent me"...

[@RMCRetro]

Ken sent me...kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWbOg6JqdpuEqrs

[@TheTomimt]

Thanks for this one. I have a great deal of appreciation towards Al Lowe, as he has always seemed like a nice guy and the way he designed his games show he wanted to constantly improve his craft. I blogged about Larry games a while back: playernone.blogspot.com/2016/06/final-thoughts-on-leisure-suit-larry.html

[@Jeijeiwrld]

Preventive like until I can fully enjoy the interview at home! Really nostalgic memories from great games and “simpler” times!