Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work is a video game with pictures and stories created and sold by Sierra On-Line for Amiga, DOS, and Macintosh computers in 1991. It is the fourth game in the Leisure Suit Larry series and the first Larry game to use 256-color graphics and a navigation system based on icons. It follows the 1989 game Leisure Suit Larry 3, but there was no fourth game in the series, which makes the title a bit confusing. The game is followed by Leisure Suit Larry 6 in 1993. It was released again in 2017 on Steam, which works on Windows computers.

Gameplay

Leisure Suit Larry 5 builds on the multiple-character feature from the earlier game, with control switching between the main characters, Larry and Patti, at different times. A change in the game's design is the addition of the "Zipper" icon, which allows the character to perform a romantic action.

The game is much easier than previous versions. Neither character can be stuck or die, and it is impossible to lose the game. Many items players find during the game are optional, meaning they are not required to progress. These items can lead to different ways to solve problems and affect the final score, but they do not change how the game moves forward.

Plot

The story begins with the missing Leisure Suit Larry 4 game. Julius Biggs has stolen important floppy disks, causing Larry Laffer to lose his memory. Larry wakes up working as a videotape technician at PornProdCorp, a company that makes adult films but is trying to switch to making regular TV shows. His boss, Silas Scruemall, sends Larry on a mission to travel across the United States with a hidden camera. His task is to film three women for a new TV show called America's Sexiest Home Videos.

At the same time, FBI Inspector Desmond asks pianist Passionate Patti to help with a secret mission. The FBI believes organized crime groups are hiding in the music industry by adding hidden messages to rock and rap songs. Patti must investigate two places: Des Rever Records in Baltimore and K-RAP Radio in Philadelphia, which are suspected of being controlled by criminals.

Larry travels to meet three women in different cities. In New York City, he meets Michelle Milken, a person who sells risky financial products. She tricks Larry into giving her his money and credit cards. In Atlantic City, he meets Lana Luscious, a professional mud wrestler he meets on the boardwalk. His final stop is Miami, where he meets Chi Chi Lambada, a dental hygienist and former gymnast.

Patti finds proof of hidden messages in music and documents showing links to organized crime. Both Larry’s and Patti’s stories lead to Julius Biggs, who controls the music industry connections Patti is investigating and the TV company where Larry works.

On his way back to Los Angeles, Larry has an airplane accident. He safely lands the plane and is celebrated as a hero. He is invited to the White House by George H. W. Bush, where he meets Patti again.

Development

After the release of Leisure Suit Larry III in 1989, designer Al Lowe thought the series would end with three games. However, Lowe and Ken Williams, president of Sierra On-Line, considered making Larry an online, multiplayer adventure. In early 1991, Lowe and a small team started working on Leisure Suit Larry 4, which was meant to be the first online game for Sierra Network. They created custom code (named "Facemaker") and a waiting-room system to let players create avatars and interact in real time. These experiments faced problems because of slow dial-up internet speeds and limited graphics capabilities, and the Larry 4 project was stopped.

Without a working version of Larry 4, Lowe needed a new idea. During a casual conversation, he joked that the next game would be called "Larry 5" instead of 4. This became a famous in-joke: Larry 4 never existed (its "missing floppies" were stolen, causing Larry's amnesia), and Larry 5 continued the story without repeating the fourth game. This skipped entry helped draw attention to the new game. Lowe later said skipping "4" allowed him to avoid continuing the happy ending of Larry and Patti’s story, and the mystery of "What happened to Larry 4?" interested players.

At this time, Sierra improved its technology. Larry 5 was made using the new Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI1), which supported 256-color VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface. It was the first Larry game to use a mouse-driven icon bar (replacing the old text parser) and full-color backgrounds. Lowe and his team redesigned every scene in VGA, using the richer colors to add more details and humor. This change made puzzles easier because players no longer had to guess specific commands. To balance this, the team added more puzzles and interactions, including a new "Zipper" icon that let Larry perform his signature jokes without typing.

The goal for Larry 5 was to make the game more player-friendly. Unlike earlier games, Larry and Patti could not die or get stuck permanently. Surveys showed many players struggled with difficult obstacles, so Larry 5 was designed with fewer dead ends, no deaths, and easier puzzles. The game kept the structure from Larry 3, switching control between Larry Laffer and Passionate Patti depending on the chapter. In the story, Larry and Patti investigate separate cases in the pornography and music industries until their paths cross. This structure also hinted at the missing events from the fictional Larry 4, like the "missing floppies" plot.

Production was led by producer Guruka Singh Khalsa, with Lowe as writer/director and Bill Davis as creative director. The team finished the game in 1991 for MS-DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh platforms. Leisure Suit Larry 5 was released in September 1991.

Reception

The game sold 125,000 copies in one month. Al Lowe stated that every game in the Leisure Suit Larry series, including Leisure Suit Larry 5, sold more than 250,000 copies each. Sierra reported that the total sales of all Larry games reached more than 1.4 million copies by March 1996, before Love for Sail! was released. By the time Love for Sail! launched, the combined sales of the first five Leisure Suit Larry games had exceeded 2 million copies. Computer Gaming World described Leisure Suit Larry 5 as "a thoroughly enjoyable game."