Softporn Adventure

The Good
Softporn Adventure is Sierra's first attempt at creating an adventure game. Although it is pure text-only, it is understandable considering that adventure games that were created in the early '80s were like that. So why am I reviewing a text-only game? Well, I believe that anyone who have played every game in the Leisure Suit Larry series should know where its roots came from, because it is what inspired Al Lowe to create the series.

Softporn tells the story of a playboy who players don't know the name of. For the purposes of this review, let's call him Bob. Bob decides to go around town and seduce three women, and he does this by spoiling them with gifts and doing other stuff a normal woman likes. But in order to get through the game, Bob must be guided by the player, who types in keyboard commands to make him succeed in his quest.

I played the first LSL game long before I played Softporn, so reading the detailed descriptions of each scene made me picture what the scene would look like if the game was a LSL game graphic-wise. Some of the descriptions are amusing, like those when you turn a television on and keep flipping channels or look at the graffiti in the bathroom. I can see why this is a text adventure for adults only. When dealing with girls, the descriptions are sexually suggestive. There is one scene where you're at the disco, and when you are looking at a girl, one of the description says that she has a nice “California tan” and “perky breasts … Just the way I like them.”

A great thing about Softporn is that you can save your game, and you can store up to multiple save games (I don't know how many). When you die, you can load your game from your last save point, instead of going back to the start. Saving is useful when you play games at the casino. (Save when you win, load when you lose.)

The Bad
In order to proceed through the game, you have to spend a fair bit of money. The prices in the game are outrageous: $100 just for a goddamn beer, whiskey, or taxi ride; and to make matters worse, $2000 is the amount you pay to see a hooker. I didn't like the idea of taking a trip to the casino more than once and gambling away, because winning money is a slow process. And if you happen to run out of money, the game ends rather than allowing you to continue but denying you anything until you win.

You are offered two games at the casino, slots or blackjack. When you are playing slots, you have to find two matching symbols to win $300, or three symbols for a large sum of money (I don't remember the exact amount). It is unlikely that anyone is going to win a triple. You don't have any control the slots, just to let the game slow down and do it all for you.

Speaking of death, Softporn allows you to select one of three options: go back to life, unharmed; choose again; or quit the game. These options are numbered, yet the game also says that these are random options. So if you decide to bring yourself back to life, the game will throw you back to DOS. In this case, I find it annoying to get back into the game and reload my saved game. What is the point of having a number of options if picking one would lead to a different result?

The Bottom Line
In Softporn, you have the goal of finding three beautiful women and seducing them, and this can be done by smothering them with gifts and doing great things for them. It's just too bad that you have to spend a lot of money is an imaginary place where everything is an absolute rip-off. As far as I know, this is the only text-only adventure done by Sierra, so you have to sympathize with them. The descriptions are detailed enough, to the point where they are sexually-suggestive.

Just by playing Softporn, I can see that this is the precursor to Leisure Suit Larry. When you read almost every description in the game and try to picture what the scene looks like, you will find that scene is already illustrated in Al Lowe's version. As I mentioned, you need to screw three women to complete the game. That's the same number of women you have to screw in Leisure Suit Larry.

The front cover pictures three women in a jacuzzi, with one of them being Roberta Williams herself – and boy, does she look hot! The woman on the left has her nipples exposed, so players should have clearly seen that this is an adult-ordinated game.