Narrator: Finally! Your luck has changed, Larry! Two weeks at an exclusive health spa, filled with gorgeous women!
Larry: La Costa Lotta, HERE I COME!
Larry: La Costa Lotta, HERE I COME!
Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! is a video game programmed by Al Lowe and published by Sierra in 1993. It's the fifth (there was no Leisure Suit Larry 4) installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series.
Some time after the previous game, Larry is picked to be a contestant on the dating game Stallions. Naturally, he flubs it and ends up losing. Fortunately for him, the runner up wins a some-expenses paid trip to La Costa Lotta, a tropical health spa and resort. Seeing that the place is full of women, Larry resumes his woman-chasing ways once more.
The game runs on the SCI 1.1 engine. Larry's movements are controlled with a point-and-click interface. Graphics use VGA again to make more elaborate sprites and detailed pictures of women, even if the colors are a bit garish, though the game no longer has placeholder backgrounds. Deaths were brought back, though they can very easily be undone.
The game was also remade with the SCI 2 engine and further enhanced high-resolution SVGA graphics in 1994, also featuring full voice acting for the first time in the series.
This game provides examples of:
- Absurd Altitude: The La Costa Lotta hotel has a bungee jumping facility so high up that it reaches into space.
- Absurdly-Long Limousine: There's one in the intro, with a swimming pool and helicopter pad and tennis court, and takes forever to pass the screen.
- Agony of the Feet: If you lift weights in the weight room, it will fall on Larry's foot and he will die of gangrene. Also shown during the in-game intro on the second part of the title.
- Alliterative Name: Burgundy Bodine.
- Alliterative Title: Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!
- Artistic License – Biology: If Larry goes to the mud bath still wearing his leisure suit, it melts and the narrator says La Costa Lotta keeps the temperature of their mud baths slightly higher than the melting point of polyester. He can survive if he takes it off before bathing, though. The melting point of polyester is somewhere around 482 degrees Fahrenheit or 250 degrees Celsius. No human, wearing a leisure suit or not, could survive bathing in such a temperature.
- Artistic License – Cars: Larry is escorted from the Stallions set to La Costa Lotta in a taxi which Larry comments in awe how it's a "cherry '73 Pacer". The AMC Pacer was first introduced in 1975 and no Pacer with a 1973 model year exists. However, this could just be Larry not being very knowledgeable about cars.
- Ass Shove: Let's just say Larry doesn't know what a High Colonic Treatment is.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: In one of his comments, Carlos uses several negative adjectives to describe Larry, before taking a brief pause and finishing it with "and those are your good points!"
- Barely-There Swimwear: In order to be allowed to enter the pool area, Larry must fashion a "European-style" swimsuit using only a small hand towel and some dental floss.
- Big "YES!": Every time Larry gets points in the original version, he shouts a resounding "YES!" (or "OH YES!" if he gets a large amount of them).
- Black Comedy Rape: It's heavily implied that transvestite Shablee rapes Larry; after her Unsettling Gender-Reveal, she walks towards Larry, the screen goes black, and there is a strange trumpet noise followed by Larry's pained/disgusted scream.
- Blowing a Raspberry: A missile fired by Daryl the gate guard blows its tongue at the screen not long before exploding.
- Book Dumb: In a conversation with Marilee, Larry demonstrates that he isn't familiar with the Constitution.Larry: I'm not sure, but isn't there something in the Constitution about this? In the part about the right to, "Arm bears," I think? note
- Briefs Boasting: The speedo Larry wears in this game is meant to show how much he loves to brag.
- The Cameo
- La Costa Lotta's gate guard is named and modeled after Daryl F. Gates, who, at the time, recently took over the Police Quest series from original creator Jim Walls.
- Per Larry tradition, Ken Williams makes yet another cameo, this time as a guest floating at the pool's bar who tells old, unfunny jokes.
- Captain Ersatz: Chablee has a strong resemblance to Dil from The Crying Game and not just in the face.
- Cartoon Throbbing: Larry needs to take the dumbwaiter up to Shamra's suite every time he wants to talk to her. Often, his nose will get stuck when he closes the door, causing it to get comically red and swollen.
- Caught with Your Pants Down: While it takes some extra effort to accomplish, using the lotion bottle together with the resort pamphlet while on the toilet in the bathroom results in Larry literally dying of embarrassment, as the entire cast of the game lines up outside the window to catch him in the act.
- Ceiling Smash: Larry can get punched by Cavaricchi so hard that he hits the ceiling and gets impaled by something on it.
- Color-Coded Speech: In the VGA version, each character has a different color for the speech window, generally matching the background color of their portraits as well: white for the narrator, yellow for Larry/Rose/Cavaricchi, light green for Merrily, pink for Burgundy, etc.
- Conspicuously Light Patch: The tile Larry removes in the shower room to look at a woman has a noticeably lighter shade of blue than the others.
- Creator Cameo: Art the tram driver looks very much like Al Lowe, which makes sense due to the portrait being recycled from the Freddy Pharkas demo, where it was Al Lowe.
- Al himself voices Larry's competition on Stallions, though he only has one line.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Larry can die just like characters in older Sierra games (including the first three Larry games), but here the player is given the option to "Try Again" which resets Larry to exactly where he was just before the player did whatever caused Larry's death.
- Distracted by the Sexy: To distract Daryl the gate guard and steal his handcuffs, you have to switch one of the cameras to the mud baths, specifically the women's shower room.
- Dry Crusader: La Costa Lotta as a whole. Unfortunately for Larry, alcoholic beverages are not served to guests, due to La Costa Lotta being a health spa. All of the drinks served at the pool's bar are health-based (and watered down, thanks to being brought up from under the pool). Fortunately, there's plenty of beer in the employee's only area of the resort.
- Dumbwaiter Ride: The only way for Larry to get to Shamara's penthouse suite is to stuff himself into the dumbwaiter while in the kitchen and ride up. Being Larry, he almost always manages to close the door on his hand or nose first.
- Easter Egg:
- Click the hand icon on the ashtray in the lobby and you will get a repeat of the Thunderbird video.
- Using the hand icon on a loose tile in the shower room will allow Larry to get a good view of a woman showering a la Porky's.
- Getting too handsy with Cavaricchi will cause her to eventually relent and show Larry her breasts, though she kills Larry shortly after.
- Edible Theme Naming: All of the women are named after varieties of wine.
- Eye Pop: Larry's eyes stretch out of his sockets when he bungee jumps from the highest point and pop back in as he rises.
- Foreshadowing: Cavaricchi wears a tank top with "USMC" on it, but since the bottom half of the tank top is cut off, the upper parts of the letters look like "HOMO". Later you get involved in a threesome with her, but she ignores you and runs off with Burgundi. Also, she says earlier that her favourite part of her job is watching girls work out in tight outfits.
- Gay Option: You can actually hook up with Gary the towel manager, either by giving him your room key or unzipping your fly in front of him, but it will result in a game over.
- High-Voltage Death: Larry can try to climb a fence, blatantly ignoring the "High Voltage" signs on it, but that results in a game over.
- Hypocrite: La Costa Lotta is supposed to be a Health spa, and yet the food that they served is revealed to originate from a Roach Coach parked inside the kitchen. Also, despite serving more health-based drinks to guests, the employees secretly hide alcoholic beverages in their personal tent!
- I'm Melting!: There are two ways for Larry to melt when he is still wearing his leisure suit: one is by jumping into the mud bath, and another by entering the sauna.
- Innocently Insensitive: Using the zipper icon on Merilly will make her comment "Wow, look at that! My boyfriend has one of those... Only his sticks out!" While her not being very bright would suggest it's unlikely to be an actual Stealth Insult, it still means another character got to mock Larry's Teeny Weenie.
- Insistent Terminology: It's THUNDERBIRD, not T-Bird. And especially not her Overly Long Name.
- Lampshaded Double Entendre: Happens so often that it becomes Larry's Catchphrase."I wish I had a dollar for every time I've said/heard that!"
- Lighter and Softer: When compared to Larry 5. That predecessor tried to have a somewhat serious spy plot, this game goes back to the series roots, featuring Larry just having fun at a spa and chasing after women. While this game does bring back the death feature, those are ultimately inconsequential.
- Logo Joke: The Sierra fanfare experiences a Letting the Air out of the Band moment, while the word SIERRA morphs into "PRESENTS".
- Loophole Abuse: Billy Dee explains to Larry that he can't give him the key to the jumping tower because he can't accept risking the lives of paying customers. When Larry responds by saying that he's on a freebie, Billy gives him the key without hesitation.
- Male Gaze: While climbing up the bungee tower with Merrily, Larry can take an extremely close look at her behind.
- Mathematician's Answer: When Larry asks Rose what brought her to America, she responds with "Airplane".
- Meaningful Name: La Costa Lotta.
- Mistaken for Profound: Shamara takes basically everything Larry says or does as if it were infinitely deeper and more thoughtful than it actually is.
- Not Completely Useless: The zipper icon. Most of the time, it's used to either trigger a funny line or in one case, a game over. However, it does have a practical use, as utilizing it on a match makes it light instantly.
- One-Man Band: The opening credits show Al Lowe playing drums, trumpet, and saxophone at the same time as he walks by. This is a joke based on the fact that the game was designed, written, directed, and produced by him.
- Opening The Floodgates: This is one of the ways you can die."Next time, try entering the swimming pool from upstairs!"
- Putting the Pee in Pool: You can use the zipper icon in the pool. Larry obviously does pee there, judging by his "Ahhhhh."
- Readings Blew Up the Scale: The three-digit point counter has all its pieces fly off and leave only springs if you manage to reach the limit of 1,000 points.
- Rhyming Names: Gary Fairy, the Camp Gay towel attendant.
- Scenery Porn: While it's actually the previous game which made the switch to VGA, it still had many remnants of EGA graphics and placeholder backgrounds in it. This game, however, takes full advantage of the new color system and shows an illustrious resort in which all backgrounds feel complete, and the high-resolution SVGA version takes this up to eleven.
- Second Prize: Larry is recruited as a contestant on a rigged game show. He ends up winning the second prize, two weeks at a health spa and resort, which is where the game is set.
- Self-Abuse: Larry's attempt at beating off is this, as he possesses no self-control and goes blind from it, naturally resulting in a game over.
- Shout-Out: During Larry's attempt on the game show, two of his lines are "I'll take 'Greek Mythology' for $500, Alex." and "Um...can I buy a vowel, Pat?".
- Show Within a Show: Stallions is an In-Universe game show Larry takes part in and wins the trip to La Costa Lotta.
- Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: A 5 on the scale. About 90% of the world can be explored immediately with minor obstructions blocking the rest, all women can be visited from the start and cleared in any order (except for Shamara, who is the end goal, and Shablee, who you need Burgundy's dress for), and there is potential for exploration.
- Soft Water: Averted. After jumping from the diving tower which is really tall, Larry hits the water incredibly hard and shouts from the pain.
- Sound Test: After meeting Cavaricchi, Larry can use her record player which can play several tracks from the LSL6 soundtrack. After beating the game and watching the end credits, you can use a menu which has pretty much every track.
- Stock Footage: The ending uses highly compressed clips from real-life situations like a train entering a tunnel or an oil rig to simulate intercourse. A few clips are even repeated at different speeds or reversed.
- Subtitles Are Superfluous: This game has dialog in text, where the text is hidden in the voiced version. This is only altered in the Scumm VM option, which can play voice and show text, but neither version gives an option to change this in-game.
- Tagline: "Play this game. Play it hard."
- Theme Naming: All women at La Costa Lotta are named after wines.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The dark-skinned makeup artist Shablee turns out to be a cross-dresser/transvestite (according to documentation/development notes), still sporting a sizable phallus. As Larry learns the truth only after some passionate kissing, his immediate after-the-reveal reaction is to recoil and start spitting and gagging. The next morning's shot shows him in his room rinsing furiously.
- Wild Hair: Shablee's hair is a load of messily-set locks, which fits her dark-skin and general appearance. The game describes it as having a wild, untamed, tribal look, that says "I dare you to try and brush me. Just try."
- Worth It: Larry can be part of an exercise program with Cavaricci Vuarnet. If Larry keeps grabbing at her shirt, she'll eventually give Larry "just a quick peek" underneath it, then proceed to uppercut him into the pipes above the room, killing him instantly. The Narrator lets you know Larry thought it was worth it.
- X-Ray Sparks: When Charlotte finally manages to make the Electroshock Exercise Machine to work on Larry, his skeleton is shown until the cutscene ends.
- Yellow Snow: A variation. Using the zipper icon on the ice machine has the narrator comment that La Costa Lotta's customers prefer their ice clear instead of yellow.
