Leather Goddesses Of Phobos, The

Leather Goddesses of Phobos for Game Boy is a handheld version of Steve Meretzky’s 1986 Infocom interactive-fiction comedy. Rather than a conventional action game, it is a text adventure: the screen describes places and events, then the player enters instructions to investigate, travel, use objects, and solve puzzles. The Game Boy edition is associated with INFGMB, Martin Korth’s 1998 interpreter for running compatible Infocom story files on Nintendo’s handheld hardware. Its source adventure was originally developed and published by Infocom for home computers, so this version carries a mid-1980s science-fiction parody onto a very different platform.

The story is set in 1936, with Earth facing an invasion by the Leather Goddesses of Phobos. After being abducted for a test connected to their scheme, the protagonist must escape and work toward stopping the extraterrestrials before their plan succeeds. The deliberately pulpy premise sends the adventure through an exaggerated mix of terrestrial and interplanetary locations, including Ohio, Mars, Venus, space, and a maze-like catacomb. Its tone is comic rather than straight-faced, borrowing the flavor of old science-fiction serials while turning their clichés toward farce.

Progress depends on reading closely and experimenting with language. Players type commands in plain English, with familiar text-adventure actions such as examining the surroundings, checking inventory, taking or using objects, talking to characters, and entering compass directions. The original manual explains that abbreviated directions work, while commands including LOOK, INVENTORY, SAVE, RESTORE, HINT, and STATUS support exploration and record-keeping. Puzzles are woven into the route through the story, and some can be approached in more than one way, making observation, item use, and careful note-taking central to the experience.

Character selection changes part of the journey. Players can take the role of either a man or a woman, with the choice affecting some encounters and assigning a different companion: Trent accompanies a male protagonist, while Tiffany joins a female protagonist. The story also offers three selectable “naughtiness” settings—Tame, Suggestive, and Lewd—which alter the presentation of its adult-oriented jokes. The game is therefore best understood as a comedy for mature players; its humor and situations are part of its identity, but its fundamental design remains that of a puzzle-driven interactive narrative.

On Game Boy, the INFGMB interpreter adapts the interface to the handheld’s controls instead of a full computer keyboard. The directional pad selects characters or words from the input screen, A adds the chosen text to the command buffer, and Start submits an instruction. Select plus the directional pad handles movement, while button combinations provide functions such as recalling prior input, adding a space, or deleting text. INFGMB was designed to fit an Infocom game’s running state, stack, variables, save positions, and display information within the Game Boy’s limited memory, and it provides multiple save slots for continuing a long adventure.

Leather Goddesses of Phobos occupies an unusual place in retro-game history because it combines Infocom’s parser-based storytelling with an unofficial handheld interpreter environment. The original game was one of Infocom’s interactive-fiction releases, written by Meretzky after Planetfall, Sorcerer, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Its physical computer packages famously included supplemental materials, such as a scratch-and-sniff card, a 3-D comic, glasses, and a catacomb map; some of those materials also related to puzzles. The Game Boy adaptation preserves the textual adventure itself, while the original’s computer-era presentation and package extras remain important context for the larger work.