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Solo Quest: Passionate Patti
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Solo Jess discusses the character Passionate Patti from Leisure Suit Larry. It's episode 69, so Al Lowe: stop sending us emails asking if we'll cover Larry on episode 69. Nice.
You can read Jess' piece on Passionate Patti here: https://www.firstpersonscholar.com/the-politics-of-passionate-patti/
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Jess Morrissette
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
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Transcript
Introduction to the Solo Episode
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast. It's your host, Jess. I am here flying solo for this episode. This is a solo quest. ah My co-host Ben is is out on assignment this week. He's going to be reporting back in about all of the most that we've been doing.
00:00:47
Speaker
He's encountered out in Los Angeles. He's in the city of angels. He's hobnobbing with the Hollywood glitterati. And once he returns, I'm sure he will have many tales to regal us with. But for this week, you're stuck with just me. So this is going to be an all just experience. And I'm happy to be here. I'm glad that glad that we can get this one in. Because we have some fun stuff to talk about this episode. And thank you all for joining me. But gosh, i don't even know how to do this without Ben. I'm never quite sure what to talk about. Usually, i kind of let him do all the heavy lifting for these episodes. And i kind of hang back. And yeah my job is really really more just to kind of poke in occasionally with with one of my famous Jess Zingers.
00:01:31
Speaker
But, you know, I'll have to i'll have to provide the setup and the zinger this episode. So that's going to be a lot more work on my part. But yeah, that's ah that's so that's where we're at. It's just just this is a classic quest quest solo quest. This is an exciting week, too, as you listen to this.
Break from Streaming and Future Plans
00:01:51
Speaker
I've been taking a little break from streaming. now By the time this comes out, I should be on the eve of returning to Retro Adventure Wednesday. Be sure to check out Decaf Jedi. That's me on Twitch.tv. Going to be jumping back in with some fun streaming. Looking forward to that. But, you know, first, before we talk about anything else, I think it's important to ask myself,
00:02:16
Speaker
this question.
First Experience with Pokémon Emerald
00:02:17
Speaker
Hey, Jess, what have you been playing? All right, cue that music. Here we go. Folks, let me tell you, what have I been playing for the first time ever? Now, this is the year 2026. For the first time ever here in the year 2026, believe it or not,
00:02:39
Speaker
I am playing a Pokemon game for the very first time. I've made it here to the present day, having never played a Pokemon game. It wasn't that was avoiding Pokemon games. It wasn't that I was trying to stay away from the series or anything.
00:02:55
Speaker
It was more just sort of You owned the original Game Boy, but by the time Pokemon made it to the US toward the end of the Game Boy's life cycle, I think I'd already kind of moved away from it. And then from there, i didn't really own any other mobile game.
00:03:14
Speaker
gaming devices after the original Game Boy. So I missed out on lot of that sort of stuff. And then by the time it started hitting consoles and really becoming just this phenomenon across all kinds of Nintendo devices, I felt like I was so far behind on Pokemon, I didn't know where to get back into it. I felt like Pocket Monsters had passed me by and I didn't know if I would ever be able to, as they say, catch every one of them.
00:03:41
Speaker
So... I decided on a Lark using my little handheld retro gaming device ah to pick up Pokemon Emerald on a on a recent flight. I thought I love everything on the Game Boy Advance. I think the Game Boy Advance for sort of retro graphics, music. I just love the aesthetic of of Game Boy Advance games. Such a fun platform.
00:04:04
Speaker
So I figured I would pick out a Game Boy Advance Pokemon game and Pokemon Emerald seemed like as good a place as any to start.
Why Pokémon Emerald is Appealing
00:04:12
Speaker
So I fired up Pokemon Emerald. My starter Pokemon was Torchic.
00:04:17
Speaker
And at this point, it's it's strange to to say this, but I've racked up like 25 hours in Pokemon Emerald and you know, I see why people are into this whole Pokemon thing. it's ah It's it's pretty folks. Let me just tell you, it's pretty good.
00:04:34
Speaker
i wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I am. You know, I will say some of the Pokemon inventory management elements are still a little frustrating to me, like having to deposit and withdraw Pokemon and having to figure out who I want with me in my party.
00:04:54
Speaker
And like, I've been walking around with couple of eggs waiting for those to hatch. And one of them hatched. It was a super disappointing Pokemon. I guess children are like that sometimes. You just have to take what you get.
00:05:07
Speaker
But, you know, that part of it's not my favorite, but the turn based combat, the light RPG exploration element, the I've got a new movement power that allows me access to a different part of the game, like a lot of that feels like 2d zelda coded to me as someone who's played very few games in in any of these genres uh so uh there are things about it that uh that definitely appeal to me i'm like 25 hours in like i said i've really put in uh a lot of work on my torchic is a combuskin now so he's like an even
00:05:43
Speaker
more dangerous kind of chicken or possibly hen. I'm not really sure. I've got, I've got, evolved a Magikarp up into a scary looking sea serpent.
00:05:53
Speaker
ah That's my, that's one of my favorites on my team right now. I've yet to, I've yet to find Pikachu. I thought those things would be everywhere. I thought that was like their main guy, but apparently Pikachus are hard to come by. And as soon as I get a Pikachu,
00:06:08
Speaker
but throw that Pokeball at him. I'm gonna get that Pikachu. I'm gonna add him to my collection. You know what? I'll probably get him and he'll be 12 levels lower than all my actual Pokemon. And he'll just sit in my bank somewhere. He'll be on my PC. I never touched because I'm going to push through this whole game, I think, with all of the Pokemon I recruited in the first like hour of the game. but Because that seems to be the cycle that I'm stuck in. But yeah, Pokemon Emerald on the Game Boy Advance.
00:06:36
Speaker
That's what I've been playing lately. And and again, i I kind of get it now. You know, something that that really struck me as I was playing Pokemon Emerald was how many sort of Pokemon memes that I had been exposed to past few decades that I kind of assumed were Pokemon memes, but wasn't 100% sure. Like a wild blank appears. That was I guess I kind of assumed was Pokemon, but I didn't realize it's like literally a phrase that will pop up every few minutes during a typical playthrough.
00:07:15
Speaker
saying that something was super effective. You even that. It's like, I know this is a reference to something. Now I know. It's to an attack that is a particularly effective attack against a certain Pokemon type. I'm now basically Pokemon master.
00:07:32
Speaker
I feel like I know everything there is to know. So you know feel free to write in. It's questquestpodcast at gmail.com. And just quiz me on the Pokemon. I can answer nearly any question now. I'm so, so on top of this. It's also been fun because my daughter, who's played a lot more Pokemon than me, is kind of checking in with me from time to time, giving me tips on beating gym leaders.
00:07:55
Speaker
She is she's given me some ideas about about which Pokemon to recruit. She has strong opinions on which ones are good Pokemon and which ones are less good Pokemon. And yeah, this is this has been a fun part of it to gain to share this game with her as as I play through.
Leisure Suit Larry Series Discussion
00:08:15
Speaker
But you know what? All of that's beside the point.
00:08:21
Speaker
because I think we're ready to move on to this week's topic. So while Ben is away this week, I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about the Leisure Suit Larry series. Not because I want to exclude Ben from that conversation, but because have a little bit more experience with Leisure Suit Larry. Who knows? We might come back and revisit some of these individual games at some point. But I want to talk a little bit about Leisure Suit Larry and a little bit about ah Passionate Patty.
00:08:53
Speaker
Leisure Suit Larry's, ah you know, One True Love. It's just kind of funny. I don't know. I don't know if that's the proper word for it. But i do want to talk a little bit about the series in general and about Passionate Patty in particular. But before I do that, you know, it's probably not a bad idea to start out with, ah you know, maybe a little bit of a disclaimer. I'm guessing most people listening to this are familiar with the Leisure Suit Larry series It's Sierra online's series of bestselling graphic adventures designed by Al Lowe. Lucy Larry one in the land of the lounge lizards comes out in 1987.
00:09:35
Speaker
And as a disclaimer, I mean, these games are, of course, semi raunchy sex comedy with a sophomoric sense of humor, I would say. um And it's worth noting, these are games that at a very fundamental level. ah Objectify women as the series progresses, the plots break down basically into a series of babes that Larry has to seduce in order to advance the story. ah There's instances, notable instances of sexism, misogyny, casual racism, not so casual racism, homophobia, transphobia, all of this scattered throughout these games. Suffice it to say,
00:10:15
Speaker
Many aspects of this series have not aged well, and a lot of them sort of arrived, expired at the time. um So as we talk about, and and I guess I'm using the royal we here because Ben's not here. It's just me. It's a solo quest. As I talk about Legion's Suit Larry, um I think...
Addressing Problematic Themes in Larry Series
00:10:36
Speaker
keeping that in mind that as we think about this series, you know, I'm not ignoring that those problematic elements exist, but want focus a little bit in on some topics that that may be irrelevant to my experiences playing through the Leisure Suit Larry games, because my experience with Leisure Suit Larry is a curious one. It starts out when I was 12 years old, which boy, that's already a good start, right? Uh, you know, I was 12 years old and for my birthday, my mom got me a copy of leisure suit, Larry one leisure suit, Larry in the land of the lounge lizards.
00:11:14
Speaker
And This is a curious choice, a curious gift for one's mom to give her preteen son. And what's even funnier is my mom had opened up this game Played through it on my computer while I was at school over the course of a week or so.
00:11:35
Speaker
Got to the end of it and then decided it's like, yep, I was playing this to see if it was appropriate for Jess and no notes. Let's just let's just wrap this bad boy up and it's happy birthday time. So great judgment there. Thanks, mom. ah But I got this when I was 12 years old, which honestly, i mean, again, i described it earlier as semi raunchy.
00:11:58
Speaker
You know, I think there's obviously some pretty inappropriate stuff in the first Larry, but Al Lowe's approach to the series, i think, stopped short of ever making these, you know, out and out porn games. I don't know that that ever quite happened.
00:12:15
Speaker
elevates itself or or sinks to that level depending on how you think about it but you know it was at its core very much a Sierra adventure game it felt like the other AGI games that loved by that point as a kid I'd played King's Quest, I'd played Space Quest, I'm almost certain I'd already been exposed to Police Quest by that point. So I was pretty steeped in all of Sierra's AGI games. So Larry, while it was certainly a little bit edgier than those games, felt like something that was right up alley. It kind of felt like, yeah, this is the the sort game i enjoy just with some subject matter hurt that I'm not as used to.
00:12:58
Speaker
And Larry one itself is a fascinating game, right? I mean, it's a remake of the earlier, uh, soft porn adventure by Chuck Benton. And then that gets remade by Al Lowe into leisure suit Larry one, which gets remade into leisure suit Larry one VGA, which gets remade years later.
00:13:19
Speaker
into Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded. Along the way, there's also ah a Japanese ah version of ah of soft porn that gets developed. It's a graphic adventure version, I think called, is it Las Vegas or just Vegas?
00:13:36
Speaker
ah So soft porn is a game that gets remade and into Larry. It gets remade into a different Japanese branch of of an adaptation. And then gets remade a few times after that. we've We've all had plenty of opportunities at this point to play some version of Larry one, I will say one of my favorite things about Larry one as someone who's a big box collector.
00:13:56
Speaker
I love that leisure suit Larry one the original EGA version comes with the cocktail napkin as a feely in in the in the original box it comes with a cocktail a napkin for lefties bar.
00:14:13
Speaker
And What a fantastic Philly. I feel like soli Sierra didn't do a ton of these sorts of in-universe Philly's. They would occasionally have something like, you know the map with Quest for Glory 2 or, you know, the...
00:14:29
Speaker
The famous adventures correspondence school books and quest for glory one were a little bit in universe. Things like maybe Laura Bow's notebook as a pack in. But this was this was kind of unique. This felt more like an Infocom feel. You're at to have a a little cocktail napkin packaged with the box. I think that's cool. I wish the air had done a little bit more of that. It could have been kind of fun to have some of those, those little knickknacks, but yeah, Larry one play to when I was 12 years old. I think my mom thought for a minute that maybe I wouldn't be able to get past the the age verification quiz at the beginning, yeah,
00:15:09
Speaker
She, I think, really underestimated how much time I had on my hands. The fact that we had an actual volume of encyclopedias in in my dad's office area that i could go reference, that didn't stop me. it's going to take ah i was a kid that grew up playing Trivial Pursuit. It's going to take a lot more than Al Lowe's multiple choice quizzes to keep me out of a video game. Sorry, Al. Good try.
00:15:36
Speaker
But, you know, probably out of the series, two games that enjoy ones that think... i think I probably have spent the most time with and the ones that for me, ah had the most fun with.
00:15:53
Speaker
I really enjoy Larry two and three. Now, this is all reflective of a personal bias that I have. Longtime listeners will know, ah in almost any game done in Sierra's SCI zero engine, that's going to be the engine that,
00:16:10
Speaker
ups the the resolution a little adds sound card support. It's the one that pauses the game as you type your commands into it. ah That engine is an engine I love, whether it's King's Quest 4, Space Quest 3, Quest for Glory 2, Codename Iceman. I love the way those games look. I love that interface. I feel like nearly all of my My Sierra games I have the fondest memories of come from this SCI Zero era.
00:16:40
Speaker
And of course, Larry 2 and 3 are both both built on that engine. And they're built on that engine with like a cool, like some little tweaks that you can tell either Al Lowe or someone on the team was playing around with. So you can do things like change the colors of some of the UI elements and other little tweaks like that.
00:16:58
Speaker
But 2 and 3 were definitely... the games that I spent the most time with, you know, in Larry to looking for love in several wrong places. Larry goes off on on an ocean cruise and eventually finds himself running afoul of of the KGB along the way. It's almost like a fun spy romp that really dials back a lot of the a lot of the sort of scoring with babes element that really define other games in the series. Larry three ah finds him on none tonight Island ah where he has just been ah been divorced by his wife and he has to hit the scene again and develop his pulsating pectorals as he goes in search of love. Once again, ah those two are the ones that I think
00:17:53
Speaker
I've had the most fun with, especially Larry
Character Analysis: Passionate Patty in Larry 3
00:17:56
Speaker
three. I think Larry three is a game that, uh, that really clicks for me. and And part of that is the introduction of passionate Patty and, and Larry three, or at least her, her proper introduction. Uh, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.
00:18:10
Speaker
Had to get my feelings on the rest of the series. Cause why not? Uh, this is a solo quest. I can say anything I want to take that Ben. um Five for me, loose su Larry five passionate Patty does a little undercover work was a pretty big letdown coming off of two and three. And then of course, skipping four, right. Um, coming off of two and three and then not, not having a Larry for five felt like a bit of a letdown in the sense that, um, while I liked
00:18:44
Speaker
the shift to this new exaggerated cartoonish style. Like I thought giving it that really funky aesthetic was a really good artistic choice. I think that it may stand out from the rest of Sierra's product line.
00:18:59
Speaker
I think treating it as a little more cartoonish in some ways helped sell it more as the satire or parody it was trying to be and maybe get you out of that weird zone of trying to figure out Is this like trying to be some sort of like serious sex comedy at some level? I mean, it definitely, i think, lets you know that if if there was any question, yeah, you're you're supposed to be laughing at Larry along the way.
00:19:27
Speaker
But five was a bit of a letdown. for me in the sense that what I remember about five was I received it for Christmas and I had completed it by New Year's. Uh, Leisure Suit Larry five is an incredibly easy game and it's an easy game by design. This is an accident. This didn't just happen.
00:19:48
Speaker
Uh, Larry five is, is easy by design. Lowe apparently had looked at a lot of the customer surveys. that were coming in, uh, from Sierra's, uh, Sierra's fans.
00:20:00
Speaker
And one of the most common sort of things that left out from these surveys apparently was Sierra's fans were saying that they weren't finishing a lot of these Sierra games, that they couldn't make it to the end.
00:20:15
Speaker
Uh, presumably they were giving up and just walking away from them, not calling the hint line, not buying the hint book, uh, not doing all that sort of stuff. And Al. decides like, well, i wanna make sure I create a game that everyone can finish.
00:20:31
Speaker
And you know me, I've talked about this before. i like an easy adventure game. ah But this one, even for me, struck me as a little too easy. It sort sort of felt like I was on rails the whole time. You combine that with the fact that it's the first game in the series to introduce the the icon interface, which already felt like it made some of these earlier games a little easier in some ways, just replacing all the verbs imaginable with a much smaller subset of like, look, interact, you know space quest four had smell and taste. This one has zipper, uh, you know, that, that already I felt like was,
00:21:14
Speaker
maybe a step toward making these games a little easier. You add in the fact that we suit Larry five. Again, if you go to the design document that's available on Al Lowe's website, he says, this is supposed to be an easy game.
00:21:26
Speaker
That was a little bit of a letdown, for me. I also don't know that the storyline of Larry working for, I guess, uh, foreign in production company. Is that the story he's like, or is it,
00:21:40
Speaker
What is it? This is the one I've probably revisited. Well, one of the ones I've revisited the least. I know he's going out in search of some of some hot babes to secretly videotape. and And meanwhile, Patty's an undercover agent for the FBI and she's off doing something.
00:21:58
Speaker
ah Dan Quayle is there at the end for some reason because, you know, it's the 90s and Dan Quayle jokes were that were the height of comedy. I don't know. Leaves to Suit Larry 5 is not my favorite. ah And there's some there some deeply problematic moments in this game, too, that that we'll loop back to as we talk a little bit more about Passionate Patty.
00:22:20
Speaker
Um, Leisure Suit Larry six shape up or slip out. Uh, that one, um, not my favorite either. I think that, uh, for me, some of the more mean spirited bits of, of Leisure Suit Larry six kind of spoil anything else that's going on. I don't want to dwell too much on those, but you know, I don't know that Larry one through five necessarily ah while there'd been certainly inappropriate jokes and, and some off color comedy and things like that, it never so felt quite like it was punching down or what it was punching down. It was punching down harder at Larry than it was any of the characters around Larry. I felt like Larry six is where you start to see it maybe punching down in a more mean spirited way. And that combined with sort sort of a,
00:23:13
Speaker
a plot that puts Larry at a, at a high end bougie, uh, spa resort. Um, I don't know if it's quite as interesting as some of the other setups we see, elsewhere in the series. So yeah, six isn't my favorite. And you know what? Um, weirdly I've never finished Larry seven. I don't know if I've made it more than halfway into Larry seven. And, you know, i think Larry seven is considered by a lot of people sort of a return to form for the series. If five and six weren't necessarily people's favorites, I think a lot of people actually like Larry seven quite a bit. Uh, I think, uh, you love for sale is a game that,
00:23:56
Speaker
you know does some neat things with its tech you know it combines elements of point and click along with a a text parser that can be used in certain circumstances it has like the the scratch and sniff card that's packaged with it that's another fun feeling right at certain points of the game it will tell you to scratch your scratch and sniff card to get whatever awful smell that larry might be smelling in a particular game that's a That's a fun little gimmick. And, but, you know, every time I've started it, I've kind just, ah I've wandered around the cruise ship. It sort of revisits a similar plot point of Larry too and sticks Larry onto a cruise ship ah where again, he's trying to score with a bunch of babes.
00:24:39
Speaker
um I just never quite, Locked into it in a way that I managed to finish it, which should be probably something i should do at some point. Again, a lot of people like Larry Seven. I should give it a shot. I will say, now here's here's the here's the big story, gang.
00:24:58
Speaker
Don't play Leisure Suit Larry Seven Love for Sale. Play Larry. the, the old JavaScript mobile phone, leisure suit, Larry love for sale game. Uh, that is an entirely original adventure game, uh, which shares a name with Larry seven, but it is a fascinating piece of work. I, at one point, Larry wears the mask of eternity from King's quest mask of eternity. He meets Ken and Roberta Williams. All kinds of crazy stuff happen in that mobile version of this game. It's floating around out there on the internet. You can emulate it with some Java game emulators. You've got to go play that one. I think it's it's a Larry game hardly anyone ever talks about.
00:25:44
Speaker
ah It's surprisingly good. I actually recommend that. But I haven't finished the real Larry 7 yet. But someday. Someday. But a big part of why I wanted to talk about Leisure Suit Larry in this episode, and you know what?
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, if you're counting, this is episode 69. So if you've just been giggling the entire episode, yes, I didn't realize that until after I'd picked this topic for my solo quest, that this was going to be Quest Quest episode 69. And yes, we are talking about Leisure Suit Larry, but you know, ah keep it clean out there, gang. We're we're more mature than that. This is ah this is purely a coincidence.
00:26:25
Speaker
But one of the reasons I wanted to talk about Leisure Suit Larry was as an opportunity to talk about a character that I've always personally found very fascinating from the series. And that is passionate Patty, who is introduced, uh, fully introduced in Larry three. She makes a cameo in Larry two briefly, uh, but appears prominently in Larry three and Larry five as a playable protagonist. And I've always found Passionate Patty fascinating, so much so that a few years ago, I wrote an article about her in First Person Scholar. if you If you Google that, you'll be able to track that down. And and a lot of what I said there is is what I'd like to talk about today, because I find Passionate Patty and where she fits into this series to be kind of...
00:27:20
Speaker
an interesting opportunity that is groundbreaking in some important ways, but ultimately I think then fails to live up to a lot of its promise in others.
Patty as a Sex-Positive Protagonist
00:27:34
Speaker
So i want to explore where passionate Patty fits into this series and some of the things that i think her make her a unique figure in video game history and the ways in which she sort of contributes to to this broader Larry franchise.
00:27:51
Speaker
um As I said, she's first introduced at the end of ah Larry to when Larry is infiltrating the secret volcano base of Dr. No Nuki, which is that's ah That's an interesting sentence to say aloud now that I say it aloud. As Larry is infiltrating the volcanic secret lair of Dr. Nanuki, ah there is a lounge pianist ah there in his secret lair who identifies herself as Polyester Patty.
00:28:21
Speaker
That's Patty with a y not an i as it would later appear. But she introduces herself and as Polyester Patty and sort of hints that she'll show up again By the time she actually does reappear in Larry three, she's still a lounge singer. She's still playing piano in a bar at the casino on none tonight Island. But now she is passionate Patty and Patty with an eye.
00:28:48
Speaker
and As she's introduced, she's introduced kind of like you would expect by that point in the series, any babe to be introduced. ah You know, Larry meets her. You get a nice close-up showing this beautiful 16-color woman.
00:29:06
Speaker
And, you know, as usual, you you complete some kind of task ah that, you know, Larry pursues and woos her and they end up sleeping together. But what's fascinating here is while this is something that has happened to Larry before, and usually those sexual encounters end with some sort of humiliation for Larry, right? These these never go quite as he imagines in most cases.
00:29:31
Speaker
um But after their encounter ends, um Leisure Suit Larry shifts its perspective ah midway through the game. ah Larry disappears mysteriously into the night.
00:29:45
Speaker
And when Patty wakes up the next morning, she's now the playable character for the remainder of the adventure. You're now playing as passionate Patty. And this is fascinating, right? For a game that was...
00:29:59
Speaker
very much about, you know, horndog dude in a leisure suit chasing after women to flip this perspective over to Patty, uh, midway through the game is an opportunity for Larry three to really turn a lot of what the series was on its head.
00:30:20
Speaker
and That's fascinating. This wasn't a surprise. It mentions right on the on the box copy, if I recall, that you're going to get to experience this adventure from both sides. In fact, let me wheel over here.
00:30:32
Speaker
this is usually where Ben would vamp. I'm going far away from my microphone. Far, far away. I'm sliding back over. Oh, here I come. I'm almost back. Oh, that's good audio. That's what you want to hear. That's what you want to hear when you listen to a podcast. Let's see. How it does the box art describe Passionate Patty?
00:30:57
Speaker
Oh man. Yeah, here we go. Are you a smooth, suave, single guy on the make? Or maybe you fancy yourself the sleek, sexy femme fatale. Whoever you are, get ready for a look at the other side of life. And Sierra's latest 3D adventure leaves you suit Larry 3, passionate Patty in pursuit of the pulsating pectorals. You're both.
00:31:16
Speaker
And it goes on to describe your adventure as Patty, as Larry. But yeah, this shift happens. And you know this is ah This is significant in sort of a broader historical sense. Leisure Suit Larry 3 comes out in 1989.
00:31:36
Speaker
eighty nine But when this game came out, the idea of any kind of female protagonist was still...
00:31:47
Speaker
Pretty rare, you know, Sierra had done one before itself, right? King's quest for the perils of Rosella came out the year before. um And it certainly features Rosella on her fairy tale quest to save her father, King Graham.
00:32:02
Speaker
ah But prior to that, female protagonists, playable for female protagonists in video games were pretty rare. i mean, you you have some obvious ones like, you know, Ms. Pac-Man in 1981. I mean, I guess the kangaroo from Kangaroo is a mom.
00:32:25
Speaker
So, I mean, yeah, that's that's a playable female kangaroo pertra protagonist, so we shouldn't discount that. ah And I think ah a great history of these sorts of playable protagonists, you know while Ms. Pac-Man's an obvious touchstone, um I don't believe that she was the first. I think ah Kate Willert on on social media has has traced this quite a bit quite a bit more to get more definitive answers, taking into account games released in Japan and elsewhere.
00:33:00
Speaker
ah But the the big milestones for most Western gamers, you know it's it's sort of Miss Pac-Man in 1986. We have Samus from Metroid. That's a that's a big one. And even there, it's kept secret from the player throughout the the entire game that they are playing as a woman. Right. That's the that's the big twist. I'm sorry. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. At the end of Metroid, we found out that Samus, this badass intergalactic bounty hunter, um has been a lady all along. Can you believe it? She was shooting guns and killing mother brains and like stomping on Metroids and things like that the whole game and grabbing those energy capsules and all kinds of things that we only thought that male protagonists could do up to that point.
00:33:45
Speaker
ah But even then, it's like that comes with the with the caveat of, well, you get the reveal that she's a woman at the end of the game. But depending on how quickly you beat the game, she will be an increasingly stages of undressed, depending on your time of completion.
00:34:05
Speaker
So even there, it's like, well, yes, it's kind of awesome that we reveal Samus sort of subverts her expectations of what an action hero in video games is going to be in 1986. But we did manage in the closing scene to find a way it's like, well, maybe we can sexualize her a bit and how to maybe we can throw her into a bikini if you really like burn through this game quickly enough. And there'll be a thing we see a little bit with Patty as well.
00:34:30
Speaker
But in 1988, when Leisure Suit Larry 3 comes along, this sort of female protagonist was still decidedly rare in video games. So Patty's not only just an early example of a playable female protagonist, but...
00:34:51
Speaker
particularly she is an exceedingly rare at the time instance of a sex positive female video game protagonist, right? This is a, a character who's not afraid to pursue sex the same way that Larry was never shy about, uh, about going out there and trying to get laid. Uh, Patty herself is, uh, is willing to, to pursue sex. She is, uh, you know, in that sense,
00:35:21
Speaker
Kind of unexpected. She, uh, this is something you wouldn't expect to see. She is, um, enjoying sex on her own terms. She's not being penalized, uh, by the game for doing so. She's not punished in any way for, uh, for being, you know, depressed. portrayed as a sexual character. um She even manages to flip some of the expectations of the Larry game directly on its head. She she manages to objectify that beardy guy in the and the comedy club. ah We get the That close up of I guess it's the Chip and Dale's Club, actually. Yeah, she yeah she objectifies. We get the dreamy close up of Dale. That's the guy with the beard and the big chubby cheeks. You know, normally the series reserves those glamour close ups just for the the ladies.
00:36:10
Speaker
that that Larry is interested in but But Patty here, you mean she's so she can crush on a good-looking dude, too, with a beard. There's ah there's nothing wrong with that.
00:36:22
Speaker
I mean, later on, by the time we get to Larry 5, she has some questionable taste in in men that's only maybe grown more questionable since that game's released, right? Throughout Larry 5, we get to see Patty having...
00:36:39
Speaker
sort daydream sexual fantasies about men various points. And she imagines herself, uh, uh, making love to, uh, to Bill Gates, uh, to Donald Trump and eventually, Scrooge McDuck. Uh, and, you know, I think there is a time where I would have said, know, maybe,
00:37:03
Speaker
the duck was the most questionable choice involved there. But here in the year 2026, Scrooge McDuck is clearly the best option of the three. So I guess, you know, congratulations on your romp in the money, Ben. It could have been much worse. Uh, but i mean, at one point King Graham even runs away, ah with passionate Patty, right? We see this in Freddie Farkas. There's a little, uh, uh, a click event in the general store and Freddie Farkas, like a notice that King Graham has, has left the Valonese and is shacking up with, uh, with passionate Patty nowadays.
00:37:40
Speaker
Um, that That tells you what a alluring character this this truly is. ah But no, this idea that she's allowed to engage in the same kind of behavior that Larry does without being shamed for it, or at least not shamed any worse than Larry typically was, because a lot of his pursuit of sex, as I said, sort of involved continuous humiliation.
00:38:05
Speaker
um But yeah, this is ah this is something that I think, makes Patty really a ah standout figure. She's someone that I feel like when we write the history of women in video games, probably deserves to be mentioned a little bit more often. I think she's really overlooked as as an influential part of that history.
00:38:28
Speaker
But again, you know, kind of like I said earlier, you know, just like when Samus is introduced in Metroid and we get, you know, this, again, this awesome bounty hunter who's an action hero, you know, has ah ah has this really amazing adventure. mean, she does like the ball moves. She does the flippy jumps. i mean, this is, ah who doesn't love little bit Metroid?
00:38:53
Speaker
um I was recently at the Nintendo store, Nintendo World in New York City. And they had like a little small Metroid merch section and they had water bottles that looked like the little capsules that you grab, like the gold and red capsules that you find in Metroid. I don't know what they're called. i haven't played that much Metroid. didn't play much of the original Metroid. i played it at my friend JP's house a few times on his Nintendo growing up, but Part of me was just like, oh man, what a great idea for a piece of merch. I'm not really a Metroid fan, but maybe I need that water bottle. And I resisted it. That's the important the takeaway here is I resisted it. The same way I resisted getting a really nice replica of the Master Sword from Zelda. Being at Nintendo World Gang, I was looking at that Master Sword and I was thinking, i mean, would this look so bad in my office at work? Like if I just had a Master Sword,
00:39:51
Speaker
um I looked great. the The answer is it would look great. But I guess I want a battle-ready Master Sword. ah Ideally, one that if I'm like at peak health, somehow shoots a projectile. like And I don't know where I'm going to get that. don't know if that'd have to be spring-loaded and then like hooked up to an app that's on my pixel watch that's monitoring my heart rate and like you know resting... ah BPMs and everything. I don't know how we would determine when I'm at full health. So my battle ready master sword could shoot like some kind. of I mean, ideally like a glowing projectile. I don't know. i feel like all that is going to be.
00:40:36
Speaker
i mean, I think it's within the realm of possibility. This is the year 2026. Anything is possible. um I don't know if that product exists yet here in North America. I would have to, i would have to really do my research, but all that is, uh, is beside the point. What I was saying was Samus is, uh, you know, uh, an amazing action hero, but ultimately again, you know, the end of the game, if you do really well at it, you get to see her in less and less clothing in much the same way.
00:41:08
Speaker
a lot of, Larry, lot of the puzzles in Larry three and later Larry five involving passionate Patty have a gendered element to them. That is to say, she solves puzzles in a way that are inherently connected to her gender.
00:41:27
Speaker
Um, I mean, as she solves puzzles in Leisure Suit Larry 3, part of the process is her getting progressively undressed through that game. um I mean, the first action you take when you wake up in Larry 3 in Patty's penthouse suite is dressing her in her bra, her panties, her pantyhose, her white cocktail dress. She steps behind a dressing screen. You have to input commands to put on each of these items right away.
00:41:55
Speaker
um That's not something you ever have to do with Larry, right? The various parts of his leisure suit are in inventory items. ah For Patty, ah it is her clothing and her underwear that make up her inventory throughout much of the second half of this game.
00:42:14
Speaker
And as she encounters obstacles in Leisure Suit Larry 3, she ah She overcomes most of them by creatively using these feminine articles of clothing. she Those are panties on stage during a striptease show to attract the dancers attention. That's Dale. That's the dreamy guy with the chubby cheeks and the and the beard. ah So she can have a conversation that triggers some important clues ah later in the game.
00:42:41
Speaker
um She ties her pantyhose to a rock and uses them to rappel down a cliff. ah She tears off a strip from her dress to serve as a safety harness while ziplining across a chasm.
00:42:52
Speaker
ah She makes a sling from her bra and a pair of coconuts to subdue a feral pig. um It's... ah I mean... I think that there's an element this that has that's meant to be a little subversive.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're we're maybe playing with these ideas of of gendered articles of clothing. but i mean, the end result is that Patty is becoming increasingly undressed and exposed before she's eventually captured by a tribe of Amazonian lesbian cannibals.
00:43:24
Speaker
ah which I don't know that there's room to thoughtfully comment on on that aspect of the ah of the game. But all of this is is a form of gendered gameplay. Here are the ideas that problem solving is linked to Patty's identity as a woman.
Gendered Puzzle-Solving Elements
00:43:44
Speaker
You kind of have to perform Patty's gender as it's coded, literally and figuratively, into the game. if you want to make it to the end of Leisure Suit Larry 3 and see that great fourth wall breaking, blazing saddle sort of ending that that I love about Leisure Suit Larry 3. But yeah, it's sort of an interesting trade-off.
00:44:05
Speaker
You know, Patty doesn't get to adventure in the same way that Larry does exactly. She is very much locked into this this gendered form of puzzle solving, ah which I think, again, is fun in a subversive way, but at the same time, it treats her as a playable female protagonist with a lot of the emphasis on the female part it maybe less on the playable protagonist part.
00:44:38
Speaker
Larry five. I said before, I'm not a huge fan of Larry five. I think that it's a, a little bit of a mess of, uh, of a game. And Patty, I think is even, i think less.
00:44:55
Speaker
fully realized in leisure suit Larry five. In a lot of ways, we still have some of the elements of like, how can she use her underwear to solve puzzles here? She has what's called a ballistic brassiere. The game calls it sometimes double barreled hooter shooters. Uh, she has, uh, she has like a 12 gauge bra that she can fire as a gun. And I mean,
00:45:16
Speaker
But we we'd later see WD-40 in Space Quest V with sort of a similar gag. So that one, ah you know, is building maybe on what we saw in Leisure Suit Larry 3.
00:45:28
Speaker
three um There's also at the beginning of that game, an incredibly cringe scene where she visits the FBI gynecologist that is, is really played for laughs in, in sort of an unfortunate way and shot from like a POV of Patty up in the stirrups with this gynecologist examining her. That part's not great. And then there's just stuff that maybe has nothing to do with her gender, but is particularly awful. I mean, I think probably what Leisure Suit Larry 5 is most infamous for is um a really just just hard to imagine even in the early 1990s when this game was made an extended blackface segment involving Patty that the less said about the better, you know, that you again, even then that was the sort of thing that
00:46:24
Speaker
you really have to scratch your head how they thought this was a great idea to include and here in the present day, oh man, this, this plays poorly. I mean, it's certainly enough that for me personally, unlike my stream, it's hard to ever imagine streaming a Leisure Suit Larry 5 because it's like, I'm either gonna have to cut the camera for that scene or just skip past it. I'm not going to just sort of you know, narrate along to all of that if I can help it in front of an audience. But Leaves Suit Larry 5 isn't isn't her her best appearance from there. She pops up a little bit in like the Laffer Utilities, that desktop utilities Larry thing thing. She's in some of the wallpapers and appears a few other places there, but not as ah as a playable character because it's not an adventure game. She's featured at at least one of the Hoyle's Book of Games card collections or board game collections.
00:47:18
Speaker
But we really don't get... any more patty after that passionate patty's gone after a leisure suit larry five she's not there in six or seven there's really not a whole lot of explanation explanation going for that i imagine it's sort of the same problem of you know after we let larry find his one true love at the end of larry two we need to break them up by larry three so larry can have more adventures i suspect Al Lowe felt like having Larry and Patty find true love, maybe painted him into a bit of a
Patty's Absence and Her Potential Impact
00:47:50
Speaker
corner. And it's easier probably to drop that character and send Larry hunting after, you know, more babes, because that's what the series is, is supposed to be all about.
00:48:04
Speaker
but You know, i think of Patty and the potential of passionate Patty. And it's it's kind of fascinating to me. I think, know, In a lot of ways, Patty is what the Leisure Suit Larry series needed to head off a lot of the obvious criticisms about it. It's very easy to point to Leisure Suit Larry and point out some of the you know inherently sexist and objectifying elements of it and dismiss the series as a whole.
00:48:34
Speaker
While adding a female protagonist doesn't erase that aspect of the series, I think it does head off some of that criticism and at least gives you the opportunity to subvert some of what Larry's doing in some interesting ways and at least play with gender and sexuality in the series.
00:48:52
Speaker
An interesting you know dual perspective. I think that's, I don't know that Larry three or five ever fully achieved this, but I think this instinct of what if we added a woman's point of view to this story is a fascinating place to take leisure suit Larry. And I would have loved to have seen Al Lowe and Sierra,
00:49:14
Speaker
do more with that because mean, at the end of the day, I mean, the series is supposed to be satire and parody and comedy, but when you gamify sleeping with women for points, it's easy to lose a little bit of that context, right? I think that adding, ah adding Patty helps offset a bit of that. She balances out. Sure. It's still a sex game, but at least in this version, both men and women get a crack at it.
00:49:39
Speaker
But again, For me, i think what's fascinating about Patty is that she simultaneously exists as a strong female protagonist in a video game from the late 1980s who actually had sexual agency.
00:50:00
Speaker
Something that you just don't expect to see. It was kind of unheard of in a mainstream game at this time. I'm sure there were plenty of sex games. There have been sex games as long as there have been video games, right? There are probably sexy pong homebrews for all I know, because I can think of a lot of sexy things you could do with With one ball and two sticks. I don't know where I was going with that. ah But, you know, this is this is fascinating, you know, for 1989, a woman in a video game with sexual agency is is a fascinating thing to observe, even if.
00:50:39
Speaker
there's still some of those voyeuristic elements that seem to play out largely for an audience of what are presumed straight male gamers that undercuts ah bits of that. ah But again, Patty's not alone here. I mean, Samus has the history I've already discussed. Lara Croft, you know, is is a classic instance sort of existing simultaneously a a feminist icon and sort of a hyper-sexualized, you know, marketing phenomenon, uh, that, uh, that ultimately are are both kind of true. And, uh, yeah, Patty's part of that legacy as well. And one that, you know, I think because of the, of a genre that has, uh, you know, maybe, uh,
00:51:27
Speaker
was never as prominent maybe as, uh, as something like Tomb Raider and a series that maybe didn't get the long standing acclaim of, uh, of a Metroid or, or other ones, uh, that, that maybe be separates. But i mean, you can even see elements of this, I think,
00:51:43
Speaker
You game that I love dearly. ah No One Lives Forever and its sequel, No One Lives Forever 2. ah We see some of these elements as well, right? A lot of Kate Archer's spy gadgets are contained in lipsticks and, you know, compacts and other very, you know, sort of gendered ah pieces of, ah you know, of hardware you might find in a woman's purse.
00:52:06
Speaker
Uh, that that's part of this tradition of get gendered gameplay and, Patty may not be the first, but I think she's an important part of, uh, of that story. So yeah, for me, that's that character is something that I find particularly fascinating about the Leisure Suit Larry series and if there are parts of the Leisure Suit Larry series that you found fascinating or characters or scenes or moments or puzzles that that really stand out to you from this series or or other games that you think play with a gender and and and kind of a cool way please do reach out by email to quest quest podcast at gmail.com we would love to hear from you we'd love to read your email
00:52:48
Speaker
Uh, live on the air. It's not really live. It's live when Ben and I read it, but by the time you hear it, uh, it's, uh, it's pre-recorded. We tried doing the first several episodes live, but having to perform them over and over again for each listener just got to be, i mean, it was really eating up a lot of our week. Uh, so now we pre-record all of these things.
00:53:07
Speaker
ah But please do send us an email quest quest podcast at gmail.com. Be sure to go to wherever you listen to podcasts or even places you don't listen to podcasts and leave us a five star review. Leave us a written comment. Even we have ah we have a few of these. We would love to see more, especially if they're good. If you're planning to leave a bad written comment, you know.
00:53:28
Speaker
Sometimes can keep those sorts of things to yourself, but we'd really appreciate if you could go on. And if there's something you like about the series or an episode that you would recommend to people, ah share that in in a comment on iTunes or Spotify or wherever else you might listen to this. It makes a difference for people finding us. And and we definitely want more people to to find us and join in on this this fun adventure we like to call wests Quest Quest, colon the adventure game podcast.
00:53:58
Speaker
and Yeah, I think I can safely say this since Ben's not around. A little treat next week. I've been looking forward to this, and I think this is our opportunity next week. Be sure to tune in when we talk about Space Quest 4.