Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies

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The fourth installment of the Leisure Suit Larry series was never made for various reasons, but it is jokingly referred to by both Sierra and fans under the subtitle of The Missing Floppies (or The Case of the Missing Floppies). Much gossip and rumor have spread to explain this: most believed that the original production floppies of the game were lost (some rumors jokingly claimed that Lowe's dog ate them) and the team would not remake it from scratch. Al Lowe later confirmed that Larry 4 was to be part of the ill-fated The Sierra Network project.

Note that the Laffer Utilities, or the Leisure Suit Larry 1 VGA remake are each sometimes unofficially credited as Larry 4, as the first was the fourth ever Larry production, and the latter, the fourth game to be made. Of course, similar VGA remakes of Space Quest I, Police Quest I, and Quest for Glory I were not given new numerical titles.

The actual reasons are mainly two and have been given by Al Lowe at separate points:

Sierra had tried to create an online gaming world, The Sierra Network, a precursor of today's MMORPGs based on Larry, which would be the real Larry 4. This failed due largely to technical reasons, and a planned multiplayer Larry game on the network was shelved.
People wonder why after the online world's cancellation, Lowe didn't proceed to number 4 instead of 5. The reason is that the ending of the Larry 3 was very definite and extreme (showing Larry and Patti coming to the Sierra studios and making games based on their adventures, living happily in a mountain cabin in Coarsegold). This completed a relatively cohesive trilogy with no sequel planned and Al Lowe was in a dead end because he couldn't find a way to start it since the scenario had completed a story arc.

Eventually he decided to skip the fourth part altogether and intentionally introduce some plot gaps. This allowed him to begin freely a whole new adventure with Larry 5. The absence of the floppy disks was a plot element in the sequel since this is the explanation why Larry, as a computer generated character, came to suffer from amnesia!

According to production notes (given by Lowe himself) the following events must be assumed to have happened between Larry 3 and Larry 5 in order to logically connect the two games:

Larry and Patti plan to marry
Patti leaves him at a Yosemite church to pursue her career, but Larry is gone when she returns
The villain of Larry 5, Julius Biggs, steals the game disks and Larry suffers amnesia

[edit] References

Although Larry 4 doesn't exist, it is referred elsewhere, sometimes even becoming a plot element.

The plot of Larry 5 plays with the concept that the absence of the fourth game is the reason why Larry suffers of amnesia.

Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers, another Sierra game, also played with the idea of the lost floppies. According to the plot, unbeknownst to the employees of Sierra Online, the disks were apparently stolen by an agent of Sludge Vohaul, who subsequently used them to store his consciousness upon his demise in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge.

Later, the floppies were found floating in space by scientists in the Xenon Super Computer Project. When the game was installed on the computer, Vohaul's consciousness was unleashed on the planet, and the events leading up to the fictional, future sequel Space Quest XII: Vohaul's Revenge II began.

The sad story of these events leading up to the fall of Xenon were relayed to Roger Wilco during his adventures in Space Quest IV by a hologram of Professor Lloyd, one of the members of the original Xenon Super Computer team.

The package of Larry 4 also appears in a video game store of a space station.[1]