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Leather Goddesses of Phobos Reviews
Author: Steve Meretzky
Date: 1986
Inform
What does AIF stand for? Adult Interactive Fiction.
If you likely to
be offended by games with sexual content, you are advised not
to open these
files.
Reviewed by Graeme Cree (SPAG
#4 -- March 2, 1995)
In this risque imitation of 1930's pulp fiction, you are captured by the Leather
Goddesses of Phobos. For some reason, you escape, and with your trusted
companion Trent/Tiffany, you tour the Solar System searching for a collection of
incongruous objects, which when put together will form a
super-duper-anti-Leather-Goddesses-of-Phobos-attack-machine. The game begins by
patting itself on the back for the outraged reactions that it will likely induce
in old fuddy-duddies, though truth be told it is not much dirtier than your
average beer commercial (though it is much more clever). The game has three
naughtiness modes for dealing with sex scenes:
TAME - No sex scenes
SUGGESTIVE - You're told that the scene is happening, but no more
LEWD - Level of description about equal to a Harlequin novel
In addition, Lewd mode has one or two 4-letter words, seemingly thrown in out of
some sense of obligation, as they don't mesh very well with Meretzky's humour at
all.
The game wonderfully recreates the feel of 30's pulp fiction, from the
swordfight on the hull of the Space Battleship (without spacesuits, naturally),
to the Sultan and other colourful characters you meet on Mars, to the
delightfully contrived situation at the South Pole, to the marvelous running gag
concerning the lucky escapes of your faithful companion. The final scene where
you try to assemble your machine while under attack by all of the Leather
Goddesses minions is one of the greatest moments in interactive fiction, and one
that would be utterly impossible to reproduce with graphics.
I generally enjoy games like Spellbreaker that spread the action over a wide
area, and Leather Goddesses has one of the widest areas of all, with the
action ranging between Venus, Mars, Phobos, Earth, and Saturn orbit. Leather
Goddesses has some of the best freebies of any Infocom game, including a 3-D
comic book, 3-D glasses, and a scratch and sniff card. It was one of the five
games made into a Solid Gold edition. The Solid Gold edition contains not only
onscreen hints, but the ability to get through the difficult catacombs maze with
a single special command. The game also allows you to play as either a male or a
female, depending on which restroom you
enter at the beginning.
Some early editions of the game had a Lost in the Desert maze in place of the
Martian Desert room. I have only heard of this edition, not seen it, and if
anyone has a copy, I'd love to see it. The non-Solid Gold editions of the game
had a "Boss key," whereby you could bring a specially created text file onscreen
by hitting Control-B. The file included with the game was a sample screen of
Infocom's Cornerstone database, the easy-to-use productivity software that
almost [Well, did. Let's be honest. -GKW]
bankrupted the company. Later Infocom games that used the same interpreter also
had the Boss key feature, though it was never mentioned.
A sequel is promised at the end of the game. This was released as a graphic
adventure in 1992 by Activision/Infocom, but this is already out of print, and
probably getting difficult to find. LGOP2 promised yet a third instalment, but
there is no word on this.
All in all, Leather Goddesses of Phobos is one of Infocom's best efforts.
[A few brief notes. MINOR SPOILER, beware! That boss key screen is a real
chuckle, and if you have the version with it, definitely read it over once, just
for yucks. Here's the scoop on avoiding the catacombs. As soon as you descend
into them, type $CATACOMB. If it works in your version, you will have skipped
past one of the most insidious and evil puzzles in all of Infocom-dom.]
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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