A look back at Leisure Suit Larry and the claims that pirated versions of the game contributed to the spread of the Jerusalem DOS virus in the late 1980s
Leisure Suit Larry sprang from the womb a combed-over Casanova in white polyester. A court jester with a satyr's appetites … Tweets: @mistertechblog , @vice , @duncanfyfe , @robzacny , and @derektmead Tweets: @mistertechblog : “Servers had shut down on Wall Street. Hard drives were wiped in the banks and trading houses of the City of London ... What all these incidents had in common was ... pirated copies of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards”... https://www.vice.com/... @vice : In the late 80s, Sierra's hokey horndog was connected to a major computer virus, and rumor had it that the publisher may have created it to punish pirates. https://www.vice.com/... Duncan Fyfe / @duncanfyfe : I did not plan this, but my contribution to the virus discourse is a piece about Leisure Suit Larry. https://www.vice.com/... Robert Zacny / @robzacny : Here's @DuncanFyfe getting to the bottom of one of the weird urban legends around early Sierra: did the publisher use Leisure Suit Larry to sneak a software virus into the piracy community? https://www.vice.com/... @derektmead : This look back at Leisure Suit Larry, and its weird connection to one of the most common viruses of the late 80s, is a nice escape from everything else to read today https://www.vice.com/...