| Al Lowe | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 24, 1946 Gumbo, Missouri, United States |
| Occupation | musician and game designer |
| Website | |
| www.allowe.com | |
Al Lowe (born July 24, 1946) is an American musician and game designer/programmer who developed several adventure games, mostly for Sierra On-Line. He is best known for his creation of Leisure Suit Larry and the long-running series it spawned.
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Lowe began his career teaching public school music for 15 years. After that time, he decided to teach himself programming and in 1982 he created three games for the Apple II: Dragon's Keep, Bop-A-Bet, and Troll's Tale. Sierra Entertainment bought these games in 1983 and Al worked for them as a programmer and game designer for 16 years.
His first projects included Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, Donald Duck's Playground, and The Black Cauldron, all based on Disney properties.
In 1986, he was lead programmer on King's Quest III and Police Quest I and also created the music for other Sierra games.
He is best known for his Leisure Suit Larry series of games and its infectious theme song, which he composed. After Larry's success, Lowe also designed other games such as Torin's Passage and Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (with Josh Mandel). Throughout his career, Lowe was known for his distinctive bald head, full beard, and considerable belly. He liked to call himself "the world's oldest game designer".
In 1994, he moved with his family to Seattle and supposedly enjoyed retirement since 1998. Lowe has played saxophone professionally since age 13 and still performs with local jazz bands, including MOJO.[1]
In a 2006 interview,[2] Al revealed that he was not actually retired, but had spent well over a year secretly designing a new game Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure, an action comedy game developed by iBase Entertainment, which he co-founded with Ken Wegrzyn. Unable to locate a publisher to promote and distribute Sam Suede, iBase Entertainment shut down in December 2006. Following this setback, Lowe expressed serious doubts whether he'd ever reenter the gaming industry again.[3]
As of January 2007, the website for Sam Suede developer iBase Entertainment lists the project as postponed pending acquisition of additional development funding.
In November 2007 he was the guest of honor at the Alternative Party 2007 in Helsinki, Finland and played saxophone live with David Hasselhoff Big Band.[4][5] Lowe's primary emphasis now is his humor web site Al Lowe's Humor Site and CyberJoke 3000, a daily joke mailing list.
Lowe has been a model railroader for several decades. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the 4th Division of the Pacific Northwest Region of the National Model Railroad Association.[6]
In 2010 he produced and directed Al Lowe's Comedy Club, developed by The Binary Mill for iOS devices. [7]
Lowe has been recruited by Replay Games to work on high-definition remakes of the first seven Leisure Suit Larry games, originally released on the PC unlike Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, the only titles Lowe had no involvement in.
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