| FREDDY PHARKAS FRONTIER PHARMACIST |
  Ah yes, Al Lowe, Seattlite Jazz Musician and creator of some of the funniest graphical adventures that ever existed. His also were among some of the more forgiving from Sierra. After about 7 years of Leisure Suit Larry, he decided to release, with the help of Colleague Josh Mandell, a "Blazing Saddles for the PC" - that would be this, Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist, a graphical adventure PC "western" where you play as Freddy PHarkas, an ex-gunslinger gone pharmacist in the town of Coarsegold California during the gold rush era, who eventually has to get back in touch with his past to save the town from a corrupt group of inhabitants.
While not as well known as Leisure Suit Larry, it does carry some of the randy and cynical humor of the Leisure Suit Larry franchise, but "Westernized". It also intrdouced some interesting gameplay elements via the game's copy protection scheme....a false book called the "Modern Day Book of Health And Hygene" discussing a whole myriad of ailments with comedic solutions and diagnosis. The book was required for you to make actual medicines in your actual laboratory in the back of your pharmacy/home, whether it's de-flatulating a bunch of horses, or saving the town from a demon case of scours! The title has become a cult-classic on a lower level than say, Monkey Island, but it has it's legion of enduring fans to this day. One really cool addition was a CD-based "Talkie Version" that gave voices to all of the characters. This is the version I currently play, and since I have HDDs in the Gigabytes on almost all of my systems save for a few, this is totally doable without a CD these days. It's also availiable at GOG currently and will run on either your current computer, or a legacy 386+ workstation of your choice in it's current form on GOG. Randy Puzzles & Sheep Jokes - My Experiences Growing up I was pretty much BARRED from the Sierra games because the only one my collegate sister had access to were the really bawdy ones, like this, and Leisure Suit Larry, usually brought over by her college friends. I did not know of King's Quest, or Space Quest, or Police Quest. I was told not to come in the room if they were playing Leisure Suit Larry, and I was told NOT to access this game....but I did.... Honestly, I think I had the makings to become a "hacker" at that time. See, I cut my TEETH on DOS on that 386. By the time my sister got this, I was pretty proficient at navigating directories, accessing BASIC, opening command prompts using SHIFT+F9 in DOSShell. Anyway, one day when she was not at home, I tried getting into the game from DOS, and got in, and it just so happened to be at **SPOILER** a point where Madame Ovaree (the "social director" of the town of Coarsegold) and Freddy himself were in bed talking to each other. Now as it turns out, it was basically NOTHING, I would have considerd this game PG-13 after having played through it myself, and ultimatley, my sister did, but I was in a HEAP of trouble for accessing that savegame because it looks, at first glance, like things are heading in a completley different direction **wink**wink**. But that said, playing it, it was my first encounter with a graphical adventure game that did have death for humor and other elements that were flagship of Sierra that Lucasfilm ridiculed from Monkey Island forward. But it had an open-endedness that Monkey ISland did not because of that pharmacy. You could concoct your own crap from various things in your laboratory? Tyloxpolynyde pills? Quintaprazole? Primapanzopene? Quatrantrapanole? You could basically roam around and grab things not laid down, and you could even make music requests at the bar. It was a very interesting game so imagine my surprise years later when I found out there was a TALKIE version with full speech support, which is the version I have now. |
