Leather Goddess of Phobos [Solid Gold] Download (1988 Adventure Game)

Some material in this story may not be suitable for children, especially the parts involving sex, which no one should know anything about until reaching the age of eighteen (twenty-one in certain states). The story is also unsuitable for censors, members of Moral Majority, and anyone else who thinks that sex is dirty rather then fun.

After such an intro I think you should know the game will be funny, but you probably wouldn't want your parents to know that you let your younger sister read and memorize some of the parts by heart.

Well, let's go back to 1984, when Infocom decided to make a text adventure based on one of the funniest books ever. It was Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Following up on its success they decided to make another humorous sci-fi game, but this time they packed it full with sex, thus the Leather Goddesses of Phobos was born in the distant 1986.

As this is a text based adventure you shouldn't expect any graphics nor sounds. The main charm this game has lies within the descriptions. Well, they really make you feel like you're a part of the story. So the term interactive fiction really does apply. It's a sci-fi story with which you can interact. It does have a large enough vocabulary for you to experiment and have fun with, but if you simply wish to get from the beginning to the end, you should look at the walkthrough (in the extras).

To play this game you'll need the WinFrotz program, which you can find under Services -> program section on our main site.

One of the best Infocom games ever made, Leather Goddess of Phobos a big hit when it was first released in 1986. So it is no surprise that it was chosen as one of five games to be updated and re-released as "Solid Gold" edition in 1988. The entire Solid Gold line was sadly not very well known, perhaps because most people assumed it was simply a re-release of the original game. This is not the case: the Solid Gold edition games include Infocom's "InvisiClues" hints as an in-game feature, the game engine ("Z machine") was updated to version 5 (which features a more versatile parser), and most bugs squashed. The Solid Gold therefore became the best edition of Infocom classics to own and play.

As to this particular Solid Gold release, Graeme Cree says it best in his review for SPAG: "In this risque imitation of 1930's pulp fiction, you are captured by the Leather Goddesses of Phobos. For some reason, you escape, and with your trusted companion Trent/Tiffany, you tour the Solar System searching for a collection of incongruous objects, which when put together will form a super-duper-anti-Leather-Goddesses-of-Phobos-attack-machine.

The game begins by patting itself on the back for the outraged reactions that it will likely induce in old fuddy-duddies, though truth be told it is not much dirtier than your average beer commercial (though it is much more clever). The game has three naughtiness modes for dealing with sex scenes: tame, suggestive, and lewd. In addition, Lewd mode has one or two 4-letter words, seemingly thrown in out of some sense of obligation, as they don't mesh very well with Meretzky's humour at all.

The game wonderfully recreates the feel of 30's pulp fiction, from the swordfight on the hull of the Space Battleship (without spacesuits, naturally), to the Sultan and other colourful characters you meet on Mars, to the delightfully contrived situation at the South Pole, to the marvelous running gag concerning the lucky escapes of your faithful companion. The final scene where you try to assemble your machine while under attack by all of the Leather Goddesses minions is one of the greatest moments in interactive fiction, and one that would be utterly impossible to reproduce with graphics. I generally enjoy games like Spellbreaker that spread the action over a wide area, and Leather Goddesses has one of the widest areas of all, with the action ranging between Venus, Mars, Phobos, Earth, and Saturn orbit.

Leather Goddesses has some of the best freebies of any Infocom game, including a 3-D comic book, 3-D glasses, and a scratch and sniff card. It was one of the five games made into a Solid Gold edition. The Solid Gold edition contains not only onscreen hints, but the ability to get through the difficult catacombs maze with a single special command [namely $CATACOMB, which lets you skip one of the most insidious puzzles in all of Infocom games - even worse than the baseball diamond in Zork 2 in my opinion]. The game also allows you to play as either a male or a female, depending on which restroom you enter at the beginning... All in all, Leather Goddesses of Phobos is one of Infocom's best efforts." In short, if you want a risqué game that evoke B-movie atmosphere and never take itself too seriously, Leather Goddess of Phobos is a very funny, very entertaining game that will keep you hooked. It's much better than Meretzsky's dismal sequel LGOP 2, which you can also find on this site.

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