Gold Machine

I think there will always be people impressed by a marriage between entertainment and exploration of serious topics; and I think there will always be people who say “screw that message shit; I’m here to have a fun time.” (Steve Meretzky, 2013)

Leather Goddesses of Phobos (1986)

Play and read along with game and source files (Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog)
Packaging, copy protection, etc. (MoCAGH archive)
Packaging, copy protection, etc. (Infodoc archive)
Internet Archive query: “Leather Goddesses of Phobos”
HTML Invisiclues
Archived (z5) Invisiclues
Map (Infodoc archive)

Opening Crawl

  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). This story is also unsuitable for censors, members of the Moral Majority, and anyone else who thinks that sex is dirty rather than fun.

   The attitudes expressed and language used in this story are representative only of the views of the author, and in no way represent the views of Infocom, Inc. or its employees, many of whom are children, censors, and members of the Moral Majority. (But very few of whom, based on last year's Christmas Party, think that sex is dirty.)

   By now, all the folks who might be offended by LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS have whipped their disk out of their drive and, evidence in hand, are indignantly huffing toward their dealer, their lawyer, or their favorite repression-oriented politico. So... Hit the RETURN/ENTER key to begin!
 
 
...
 
 
The place: Upper Sandusky, Ohio. The time: 1936. The beer: at a nickel a mug, you don't ask for brand names. All you know is that your fifth one tasted as bad as the first.
 
LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS
Infocom interactive fiction -- a racy space-age spoof
Copyright (c) 1986 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
LEATHER GODDESSES OF PHOBOS is a trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 4 / Serial number 880405 / Interpreter 0 Version 
 
 
Joe's Bar
   An undistinguished bar, yet the social center of Upper Sandusky. The front door is almost lost amidst the hazy maze of neon that shrouds the grimy glass of the south wall. Doors marked "Ladies" and "Gents" lead, respectively, northeast and northwest.

   You feel an urge.

A Critical Introduction to Leather GOddesses of Phobos

This August will mark the 40th anniversary of Steve Meretzky’s A Mind Forever Voyaging. It is the sort of game that attracts critics, and that attraction has only grown over the years. Hand-wringing over “fairness to Reagan” has perhaps been displaced by anxiety over more recent political developments. AMFV turns up on “best of” lists rather frequently. Even critics who dislike it acknowledge it (sometimes begrudgingly) as a milestone in the evolution of interactive media. I, myself, wrote ten posts about it. Only Brian Moriarty’s Trinity has (or will) receive so much attention.

And yet, for all that, it was both a commercial bomb and an indicator of the future shape of Infocom’s fortunes. To be fair, it was hardly an outlier in terms of its performance. In fact, 1985’s Wishbringer was the lone interruption of the slump that followed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Bolstered by widespread love for Douglas Adams and his works, HHGG proved to be a misleading sales blip promising a widening audience that never materialized. While it had something to offer Adams fans (particularly those who invested in Invisiclues), it might have been less popular among fans of the genre, especially those who took pride in solving games without hints.

In any case, the game did not appear to make interactive fiction believers of anyone. Or if it did, those new converts were not interested in Suspect (Lebling 1984), A Mind Forever Voyaging (Meretzky 1985), Spellbreaker (Lebling 1985), Ballyhoo (O’Neill 1986), or Trinity (Moriarty 1986). That is to say nothing of other abuses of the Z-machine: Cornerstone (1985) and Fooblitzky (1986).

How and why did Leather Goddesses of Phobos manage to break that dismal streak? The ready, easy answer is that “sex sells.” I could not avoid the phrase during a literature review of this work. It would be naive to dispute the commercial value of sexualized content, certainly, but leaving things there is a critical abdication. While Leather Goddesses of Phobos is the sixth best-selling Infocom game, the fifth was decidedly unsexualized Wishbringer. The problem with overemphasizing the naughty bits is that one might get the idea that we have on our hands a kind of “dirtbag Ballyhoo” that slavering consumers could not resist.

The contrary truth is that Leather Goddesses of Phobos is Infocom’s last, great puzzler. You may have other games in the back half of the catalog that you enjoy. I certainly do! But if Trinity is Infocom’s highest expression of the cave game as a literary genre, then Leather Goddesses of Phobos is its rambunctious, pulpy counterpart. The voice and setting are a knowing and pitch-perfect send up of classic late night science fiction. Monsters, ray guns, rocket ships. Cave people in animal print swimwear. Ambiguously fetish-inspired alien royalty. LGoP is smart, funny, and giddy with amused affection over its source material.

Since there is only one review of Leather Goddesses of Phobos at the Interactive Fiction Database, I worry that many readers may not realize that this is, in fact, one of Infocom’s best games. Yes, it is bawdy, and that’s an attraction to be sure, but the real story is that people came for the sex and stayed for the game. I have long said that Steve Meretzky was Infocom’s best puzzle designer, and here we find him at his best.

It’s worth noting that, while Leather Goddesses of Phobos is often portrayed as Infocom’s and Meretzky’s retreat from social and political content, it openly mocks the hypocrisy of religious conservatism that was, at that time, an emergent force in Republican politics. LGoP is, for all its apparent silliness, a stunning culmination of Meretzky’s career to date: well-designed, intertextual, humorous, and socially aware: an absolute knockout.

It may be Infocom’s last, great commercial hit, but what a way to go.

Next

We’ll examine the text itself, discussing its craft qualities and elements of play.