By Kurt Kalata
All of the Tex Murphy games place in San Francisco in the early 21st century. World War III has caused significant devastation to both the city and the world at large, with the radioactive after effects causing mutations amongst the general populace. Although Tex and many others are immune, the less fortunate are not, resulting in a population of mutants. The prejudice against the mutant populace, along with the associated class struggle, often plays a large role in the stories, although Tex is firmly on their side, seeing how he's usually destitute and lives on their side of town. Like most futuristic dystopias, San Francisco is vaguely the world of Blade Runner, complete with hovercars and other bits of technology. Despite it setting, it has a very classic noir feel to it, clearly inspired by Raymond Chandler and Phillip K. Dick novels, and 50s detective films, complete with wordy internal monologues and jazzy soundtracks. However, they don't entirely play it straight - all of the Tex Murphy games have a somewhat unique sense of humor, in the way that they lovingly parody detective noir while still keeping within its conventions. You wouldn't exactly know this from looking at the covers, though, which look entirely serious.
Since its inception, the series has consistently pushed technological boundaries. Mean Streets, released in 1990, featured 256 color graphics, as well as digitized graphics and speech, even on lousy DOS-based PCs. Martian Memorandum upped the ante by using selected bits of full motion video. The third game, where the series really came into its own, is a full multi-CD adventure with tons of live action footage. One thing that has been kept consistent is the focus on digitized characters and voices, all utilizing real actors. Although Tex only appears briefly in the first two games, he's played by the same actor - designer/accountant Chris Jones - as the later FMV games. Hooray for consistency, although the same doesn't apply to some of the other recurring characters. It's interesting to see how the series evolved from a boundary pushing action/adventure/flight sim combo, to a C-grade adventure game, and to a high profile multimedia game designed specifically to compete with big name titles like Wing Commander.
Martian Memorandum
Under a Killing Moon
The Pandora Directive
Mean Streets - PC DOS / Commodore 64 / Amiga / Atari ST (1989)
Amiga Cover
IBM PC Cover
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets tries to combine several different genres into one, including a flight sim, an adventure game and an action game. When you begin, you're given a vague explanation of your mission, as well as some tips to "read the manual" for all of your leads. (There's already copy protection - why not just list these in-game?) In order to get from place to place, you hop in your hover car, which you must pilot in the first person. There are a whole bunch of awkward controls to use - using + and - to accelerate and decelerate, for example - but thankfully there's a navigational computer, which lets you input specific navigation codes to get to various places. All you need to do is type them in and set it on autopilot. Once you reach your destination, you still need to land, which is thankfully pretty easy considering it's impossible to crash land. Once you get out of your vehicle, you'll either meet with the person in question to interrogate them, or break into the facility to investigate.
When questioning suspects, you need to type in your inquiries, which is a bit unnecessary, considering most of the possibilities are already listed in the manual. Sometimes you need to threaten or bribe people to cooperate. Sometimes you can also get kicked out if you act inappropriately, but it's easy enough to come back to the conversation as if nothing happened. Your secretary Vanessa and informant Lee are also available at any time in your hovercar for additional information.
Whenever you break into a location, the game changes to a third-person view, where you (awkwardly) control Tex with the arrow keys. Whenever you walk next to something you can interact with, a menu pops up with a variety commands. The whole thing is remarkably unintuitive. Once you begin to poke around, you'll invariably set off a security alarm, which gives you limited time to search the premises to find some way to shut it off.
At a few points in the game, including bounty hunting missions to get more cash, you'll enter sidescrolling action sequences. These are all remarkably simple, as you simply walk to the right across the screen, shoot your gun, and duck under enemy fire. For some reason, the enemies shatter like glass when killed, which shows some of the odd humor the series eventually became known for.
All of the character portraits are digitized faces with limited animation. The PC version supports 256 color VGA graphics, which was impressive for 1989. The other "Big Thing" of Mean Streets is that it utilized technology called "RealSound", which allowed for speech to be played without any extra hardware. It's impressive, especially for the PC speaker in IBM PCs, considering how ear scratchingly painful it usually is, although it still doesn't touch the quality of an actual sound card.
The big problem with Mean Streets is that, from a design standpoint, it's just far too overdone. It's like someone said, "Wouldn't be awesome if you could play as a private investigator, except it'd be totally realistic, in that you can pilot your ship anywhere, and interrogate people, and break into places and solve puzzles, and even shoot people!" And maybe that could've work out, but in reality, none of these aspects are really all that impressive. The flying is slow, complicated, and ultimately made redundant by the autopilot anyway. The adventure scenes are horribly low grade, and the action scenes are amateurish. Most of the investigation just amounts to a fetch quest, as you slowly saunter from location to location, talking to people and trying to uncover eight missing passcards to stop Linsky's project, and (hopefully) remember to grab the necessary items to find them. If you neglected to pick something up somewhere, prepare for a long jaunt across the map to go back and pick it up, then another trip to return it.
So yes, it is quite tedious, but that's mostly just because it hasn't aged very well. When it came out, its ambitious design and impressive graphics, it was lauded by both critics and gamers, winning the Best Adventure Game aware of 1990 by Video Games and Computer Entertainment, and even appearing on the Top 150 PC Games of All Time in a 1996 issue of Computer Gaming World. Taken in that perspective, it's a halfway remarkable game, if mostly more in principle than execution. Since the story was eventually remade into Overseer (the fifth and last Tex Murphy game) there's really no reason to play this outside of the novelty.
Mean Streets was published for the IBM PC, Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST. The Commodore version is obviously the weakest of the bunch, because it really can't handle the digitized graphics at all. The IBM version has the best looking digitized graphics, but all of the sprites in third person sequences look completely ghastly. The Atari ST and Amiga versions are essentially identical, and while the digitized portraits aren't quite as nice, the rest of the graphics are quite a bit better than the PC version.
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets (DOS)
Mean Streets (DOS)
Comparison Screenshots
PC DOS
Amiga
Commodore 64
Martian Memorandum - PC DOS (1991)
American Cover
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
All of the flight sim and action portions from Mean Streets have thankfully been cut out, leaving the developers to focus on the core adventure aspects. It was definitely the right move, because it's a much more focused game, but it still feels pretty amateurish when compared to Lucasarts or Sierra games. The graphics, while 256 color VGA, are remarkably ugly, especially Tex's murky digitized sprite. The interface is now mouse driven, but it's remarkably clunky and a huge pain to use.
The commands are listed at the bottom of the screen, but in order to walk anywhere, you need to click one of the commands to disable it, because there's no actual "walk" command. Tex is remarkably hard to control, since there's no pathfinding, and he can only walk, slowly, in straight lines, accompanied by loud, annoying footstep noises. Which are the only noises you'll near for 90% of the game, considering there's no music. And in order to go from room to room, you need to select the "Go To" command and then point at the exit. Thankfully, there's a quick "Travel" button that lets you quickly move from most of the major locations. There are tons of items that are maybe a pixel or two in size, making it easy to pass over items, but at least a built-in Hint function will advise you of all of the objects in the room and how to interact with them. The puzzles themselves aren't terribly difficult, other than a few annoying trial-and-error segments, and a maze set in a series of air ducts.
Interrogating people still plays a large part of the game, which has been a bit streamlined. Nearly everyone you meet is hostile at first, requiring that you navigate a series of multiple choice responses to get them to cooperate. If you screw up and they kick you out, no biggie - just reenter the area and they'll react as if nothing happened. The thing is, even after you've opened them up, they still react the exact same way when you first talk to them, even though you can immediately choose the "Ask About" option in lieu of navigating through the questions again. Most of the characters speak through digitized video and speech, using the same RealSound technology as Mean Streets, and it's actually pretty impressive for a disk based game from 1991. Of course, the acting and dialogue is awful, but that's really to be expected. Not all of the characters are voiced, though, and once you pass the initial series of responses, the rest of the interrogation is all text based.
Despite all of its issues, at least Access managed to flesh out the setting. Post apocalyptic San Francisco is an interesting place to set a detective mystery, especially when you stick in all of the mutants...in other words, humans deformed by radiation. Some of them have strange growths sticking out of them - some of them just look like animals. The comedy of the later games still isn't quite apparent, apart from some of the ridiculous death scenes, with combines digitized actors with cartoonish violence. Some of the characters you interrogate are pretty silly, like the blond trophy wife who's very clearly a hairy dude in drag. The writing, like its predecessor, seems like it was by a high schooler who just read The Maltese Falcon, but the whole game has a very pioneering charm that makes it easier to overlook.
Martian Memorandum is hardly one of the stand out games of the era, although that's mostly attributed to the terrible interface and low production values. But its unique story makes it somewhat worthwhile if you can tolerate it, especially if you've been introduced to Tex in the later games, but don't expect the same level of quality.
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
Martian Memorandum
Back in the 90s, Access Software was largely known for its popular Links series of computer games. But their other big entry into the annals of computer gaming history are the Tex Murphy series of detective adventure games. You wouldn't know it offhand, though, because it wasn't until the fifth and final game that they even branded them as such. There are five titles in the Tex Murphy series, each with completely different names - Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer.
Mean Streets (no connection to the Scorcese movie) begins with Tex accepting a case from a classy looking dame named Sylvia Linsky. Her father Carl Linsky, a professor at the University of San Francisco, was found dead after having leapt off the Golden Gate Bridge. The police ruled it a suicide - Sylvia thinks it's murder, and it's up to Tex to investigate. As Tex gets further and further into the mystery, he realizes that Carl's death is in some way related to his research in neuroscience...and eventually it's up to him to stop a plot that could potentially fry the brains of everyone in the city.
Taking place a few years after the events of Mean Streets, Tex is once again contracted to find a missing person. This time, he's employed by one Marshall Alexander, a billionaire mogul, to find his missing daughter Alexis. Mr. Alexander is the head of a company called Terraform, which is in the business of colonizing Mars. Tex eventually discovers that Alexis has knowledge of a mystical object called The Oracle Stone, that is somehow related to a long lost Martian civilization. Only by traveling to the red planet and investigating its seedy underground can Tex not only recover Alexis, but save Mars as well. If some of this sounds familiar, you'd be right - a lot of it seems very reminiscent of the film Total Recall, which in turn was based off a Phillip K. Dick novella called "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".
