Lost Wages

As strange as it may sound, I used to play this game with my dad. A period of unadvisable, early 90s parenting that probably wouldn’t stand up today. I say ‘played with’. He was in the room whilst I was trying to work it out and knew about its content. Which, if we’re being honest, is borderline misogyny / pornography. A bit of blue for t’dads, indeed. BUT, the game is clearly not meant to be taken seriously. Larry Laffer is unceremoniously defined as a complete and utter slimeball loser from the off, so I don’t think anyone would ever be thinking ‘this guy has it made! I wish I was just like him!’

The aim of the game is attempting to have sex with various pixellated women. And mostly failing. Some venues in the game are fairly generic – ‘store’, ‘casino’ and so on – but what is visible is Lefty’s bar. Which I did toy with reproducing but thought better of it. Had we just been working on the original 1987 version I probably would’ve done it, but the Lounge Lizards got ‘reloaded‘ in 2013 and vastly improved the look of the game; Lefty’s logo getting a fittingly neon upgrade.

So considering that, I went for the geographical setting of Lost Wages. Which never appears visually in the game at any point. An obvious play on good old Sin City itself, I took the sleazy and run down atmosphere of the game and applied it to the iconic Las Vegas sign. Missing bulbs, broken letters and corroded metal. Also, removing the ‘L’ from ‘WELCOME’ kind of seemed fitting. I did consider putting Missouri in there, as game developer Al Lowe is from St. Louis but I thought that would just be confusing given how well known the original sign is. And what else to the Nevadans have, really? Andre Agassi listening to the Killers in the desert. Oh, they have a dam as well. So yeah, I can’t take this from them.

As with a lot of old DOS games, it’s available to play online. This one being the 1991 remake. So if you do end up playing it, take it with a pinch of salt and remember to purchase the condom before visiting the lady upstairs.