A Wikipedia Look at

the

Games

CONTENT

1. Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2. Tex Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3. Indie Built . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3. Chris Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

6. The Games 6.1. Mean Streets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6.2. Martian Memorandum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6.3. Under a Killing Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6.4. The Pandora Directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 6.5. Tex Murphy: Overseer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 6.6. Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3. Novelization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3. Radio Theather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

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Tex Murphy

Tex Murphy is a series of adventure games designed by Chris Jones. The eponymous main character is portrayed in live-action by Chris Jones himself. He is characterized as a down-on-his-luck private in-vestigator in a post-nuclear future San Francisco, borrowing tropes from both the film noir and cyber-punk genres.

The games in the Tex Murphy series take place in a post-apocalyptic 21st century. All of the games take place mostly in a post-WWIII San Francisco. The skies glow red with radiation, and people who don’t live in a better-sheltered city or lack genetic immunity to the radiation are disfigured and usually repulsive. Several San Francisco landmarks are still present, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and Alcatraz, but most of them are completely aban-doned; most damaged beyond repair from bombs in WWIII. The futuristic aspect borrows heavily from sci-fi books and films, most notably Blade Runner for its flying cars and impossibly dense tenements.

The character, Tex Murphy, is a hard-boiled PI. Tex is a member of the portion of the population born without any genetic defects making him a normal hu-man (referred by in-game characters as a “Norm”). He is an avid fan of the classic film noir films of Humphrey Bogart. As such, he does his work in the style of archetypal film noir detectives such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. He has remarkable skills of observation (always punctuated with humorous internal monologues); when examining objects or features, he hardly ever misses an important or unu-sual detail. However, he is also occasionally a bit clumsy and naive which gets him into trouble from time to time, as does his sarcastic wit.

Tex is honest and generally a good-natured fellow who suffers from a bad back, a little too much alco-hol and a few too many blows to the head. He runs his private investigation business out of his apartment at the Ritz Hotel on Chandler Avenue in Old San Fran-cisco “among the mutants and the destitute” where several businesses and friends reside, including his love interest, the mysteriously mutated newspaper stand owner Chelsee Bando. Aside from wishing for a respectable, not to mention high-paying, client all he’d like to do is earn her love and respect if he can just refrain from placing his admittedly not too bad smelling foot in his mouth.

In 2011, NowGamer ranked him as the eighth-best game detective, calling him “the epitome of the hard boiled flatfoot detective”, but wondering why he “dresses like a cross between an alcoholic Indiana Jones and Deckard from Blade Runner.”

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Developer Access Software(AMI) The Code Monkeys

Publishers Access Software(ST & AMI) U.S. Gold

Director Bruce CarverProducer Bruce CarverOriginal release date 1989 Control Point-and-clickPlatforms MS-DOS

Amigaetc.

Length 12 hoursDownload Site Gog.com

Mean Streets is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Access Software for MS-DOS and Commodore 64, in 1989. It was later ported to the Atari ST and Amiga in 1990 but these ports were only released in Europe. The game, set in dystopian cyberpunk neo-noir world, is the first in the series of Tex Murphy mysteries; its immediate sequel is Martian Memorandum. In 1998, Mean Streets was later remade as Tex Murphy: Overseer.

The Tex Murphy character was first created for the amateur film Plan 10 from Outer Space, created by Chris Jones and other members of Access Software. Following the development of their flight game Echelon they wanted to cre-ate another 3D flight game that cast players in the role of the futuristic private investigator. Eventually, adventure and action elements emerged, eclipsing the still-present flight sim sequences. Mean Streets would be noted for its use of high-color VGA graphics, digitized actors, and for its “Real Sound” technology, which allowed waveforms to be played back on the PC’s speaker without the use of a sound card.

The player plays the role of Tex Murphy, a down-and-out private investigator living in post-apocalyptic San Francisco. Tex is hired by a beautiful young wom-an named Sylvia Linsky to investigate the death of her father, Dr. Carl Linsky, a professor at the University of San Francisco. Sylvia suspects murder, but the police say it was routine suicide.

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Amiga

Atari ST

Commodore 64

MS-DOS

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The game starts in Tex’s speeder flying car, and the player can perform various functions, including moving the speeder, switching between different views, and accessing the on-board computer. The player can also contact Tex’s secretary and inform-ant and receive faxes from them if they ask for infor-mation on suspects.

The majority of the game involves the player ques-tioning people over the course of the game. Ques-tioning people often results in them giving out in-formation that further deepens the plot. After people give out the information, the player has the option of offering them money or threatening them when they appear uncooperative.

In some instances, the player receives an address of the person whom they asked about. These addresses consist of a four-digit code which the player enters into the computer on-board their speeder. Once the code has been entered, the destination is marked by a flashing square, and the player must guide their speeder to it. By doing this, the player needs to trav-el up and down the coast of California.

There are some situations where Tex have to search people’s apartments and laboratories to get further leads. In these cases, the player can, among other things, walk around the area, search desks, disable alarms, and access computers. The player’s primary objective is to collect eight passcards, along with their passwords, and use them to stop the project Carl Linsky was working on.

Mean Streets is one of the first DOS games to feature 256-color VGA graphics, at a time when VGA cards were not commonplace. It was also one of the first

games to incorporate Access Software’s patented RealSound technology in DOS gaming. This tech-nique uses the PC speaker to generate high-quality digitized sounds such as speech, music, and sound effects without the use of additional hardware.

Computer Gaming World praised the game’s “ex-hilarating” interactivity. stating that “Mean Streets offers a fully realized environment ... this license, this freedom, is refreshingly adult”, and praised the excellent graphics and “authentic hardboiled atti-tude and voice”. The magazine, however, stated that “mechanical” gameplay, such as repetitive room searches and interrogations, prevented it from being a great game.

In 1996, the magazine ranked it as the 139th best game of all time, saying that it “set a new stand-ard for 286 games and offered tribute to Raymond Chandler’s novels.”

The series’ third game, Under a Killing Moon, marked a dramatic shift for the series in terms of both presentation and gameplay, and introduced the character to a much wider audience. In 1998, Ac-cess released Tex Murphy: Overseer as a re-telling of Mean Streets’ story, done in the style of the newer games. It used a frame narrative set later in the se-ries, and told the story through a series of flashbacks.

There are many references to TV shows and movies in Mean Streets. For example, turn on the TV in Ron Morgon’s Cabin and the sound resembles Star Trek. Also, the US box art bears a striking resemblance to Blade Runner’s original theatrical poster.

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Developer Access SoftwarePublisher Access Software

(EU) U.S. GoldDirector David F. BrownOriginal release date October 31, 1994 Control Click-and-drag, KeyboardPlatform(s) MS-DOS

Mac OS etc.

Length 17.6 hoursDownload Site Gog.com

The third title in the series, Under a Killing Moon, spent nearly four years in de-velopment, and represented the company’s most ambitious game to date. Under a Killing Moon shipped on a previously unheard-of four CD-ROMs, and featured full voiceover and hours of cut scenes and dialog featuring live actors. Unlike many games using full motion video, however, it also featured high-end real-time 3D graphics and explorable environments unlike anything previously seen in the genre. Under a Killing Moon was widely praised for its use of technology, and represented the series’ commercial peak.

Under a Killing Moon takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in De-cember 2042. Tensions between Norms and Mutants have risen dramatically. The Mutants are usually forced to live in the run-down areas of cities such as Old San Francisco. There, the private investigator Tex Murphy is trying to deal with unemployment, upcoming poverty, and his melancholic mood following his divorce. After solving a simple robbery case, Tex attracts the attention of a mysterious woman who calls herself Countess Renier, and is hired by her to find a missing statuette. Things gradually begin to go wrong in this investigation, and Tex finds himself involved in a confrontation with a powerful and dangerous secret cult.

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The player controls the protagonist Tex from a first person perspective. The virtual world allows full freedom of movement, and as such allows the player to look for clues in every nook and cranny. It was also the first Tex Murphy game to stray from the tra-ditional adventure game dialogue format of provid-ing options that showed exactly what the player’s character would say. Instead, descriptions of the dia-logue choices were given, providing some mystery to what Tex would say.

Under a Killing Moon was one of the largest video games of its era, with a budget of 2 million dollars and arriving on four CD-ROMs (although some material was duplicated among the four to reduce the amount of swapping). The game combined full motion video cutscenes with an advanced 3D vir-tual world to explore. Though action games with 3D environments and first-person perspective had been popularized by first-person shooters such as Doom, it was very unusual at the time to see these char-acteristics used in an adventure game. It is notable that the game’s 3D graphics did not use ray casting techniques like Doom, but true texture-mapped pol-ygons that allowed players to look in all directions as well as duck, and ran in then-high resolutions of up to 640x480. The designers Chris Jones and Aar-on Conners recalled they went to their programmers and said, “we want the 3D movement of Wolfen-stein, but we want it to look closer to the quality of The 7th Guest.”

Under A Killing Moon marked the death of Access’ RealSound technology; the patent holder said in an interview that, by that time, “the market had moved on and the use of sound cards had become common-

place.” There is still a small bit of technical innova-tion in the MIDI engine (designed by Human Ma-chine Interfaces) in Under A Killing Moon, though: If the user chose to check the “digital drums” option, sampled drum sounds were used instead of synthe-sized ones. This made the music sound less artificial on FM synthesis-based sound cards like the Sound Blaster.

Sometimes the limitations of the technology became apparent when moving very close to textures. An in-side joke is made about that when examining the fire extinguisher on the wall; Tex quips that the landlord was so cheap that he painted fire extinquishers on the walls to fool the building inspector, since the in-spector had “only one eye and no depth perception”.

Under a Killing Moon received universally positive reviews. Contemporary reviews praised the game for its technology and cinematic presentation. In 2002, Adventure Gamers gave it a score of 4.5 out of 5, calling it “a fantastically-plotted mystery with great characters and classic Tex Murphy humor.” According to IGN in 2006, the game “has weathered the test of time as one of the best detective games to this day.” IGN also called it “a landmark for adven-ture games” and “a rebirth for the series, using new technology to create a game that was both cinematic and playable.”

Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 99th in their 1996 list of the best computer games of all time for the “campy humor combined with amazing 3D scenery in this futuristic film noir.” In 2011, Adven-ture Gamers placed it 25th on their list of all-time best adventure games.

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Developer Access SoftwarePublisher Access SoftwareDesigners Chris Jones

Aaron ConnersOriginal release date July 31, 1996 Control Click-and-drag, KeyboardPlatform(s) MS-DOS

etc. Length 24.4 hoursDownload Site Gog.com

For The Pandora Directive, the fourth installment in the series, Access re-used the engine and technology they had developed for Under a Killing Moon, but hired Hollywood director Adrian Carr to direct the game’s video sequences and improve the storytelling and presentation. Although The Pandora Directive was well received by fans and critics, it was unable to replicate the financial success of its predecessor.

Like all Tex Murphy games, The Pandora Directive takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in April 2043. After the events of Under a Killing Moon, tensions between the two groups have begun to diminish. The end to the Cru-sade for Genetic Purity was a turning point in the relations between Mutants and “Norms”. Tex still lives on Chandler Ave., which recently underwent a city-fund-ed cleanup. The events of WWIII still left the planet with no ozone layer, and to protect their citizens many countries adopted a time reversal. Instead of sleeping at night, and being awake in the day, humans have become nocturnal, in a man-ner of speaking. In The Pandora Directive, Tex is hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick to find his friend, Thomas Malloy. Tex quickly discovers that Fitzpatrick is not the only one who is looking for Malloy and finds himself dragged into a dangerous situation. With few he can trust, Tex must try and unravel the mystery surround-ing Malloy, and along the way he’ll learn the devastating truth behind the great-est government conspiracy of all time. The game has a large cast of characters ranging from the deranged to deadly.

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Players explore environments from a first-person perspective and can click to examine objects or in-teract using a variety of verbs. In addition to verb interaction, players can gather, use, and combine items to solve a variety of puzzles, and must also solve self-contained logic puzzles. Character inter-action consists of two primary modes: asking char-acters about a universal list of topics available to the player, and branching dialog trees. These dialog trees were unusual at the time in that they did not display Tex’s full response, but rather a short and sometimes humorous description, a convention later popularized by Bioware.

The Pandora Directive was one of the first adventure games to feature branching narratives and multiple endings. The player could take Tex down “Mission Street” where he takes the high road and wins the love of his long time crush, Chelsee Bando. Mission Street has three possible endings. Down “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, Tex is a selfish and cynical jerk worrying only about the big payoff. Boulevard of Broken Dreams leads to four possible endings. If the player chooses neither path, Tex will go down “Lombard Street”. On this path, he’s not really a nice guy, but he’s not mean either. Lombard Street leads to two possible endings, both of which are common to Mission Street. The “best” Mission Street end-ing is achieved when the player has taken the high road every time he was given the choice, and by ex-actly following two conversation paths earlier in the game.

The Pandora Directive provided two difficulty set-tings, Entertainment and Game Players mode. On Entertainment, hints were available and the player could bypass certain puzzles if the player so chose. Some minor objects and video scenes were avail-able on this setting that were not available on Game Players mode. A total of 1500 points were available on Entertainment mode. On Game Players mode, no hints were available and puzzles could not be by-passed. Bonus points were available to those who solved certain puzzles in an allotted time or within a certain number of moves. In addition to this, ex-tra in game locations and puzzles were available on Game Players mode that weren’t available on Entertainment mode, making for a more challeng-ing game playing experience. A total of 4000 points were available on Game Players mode.

Computer Gaming World gave it the Adventure Game of the Year award.

A novelization of the game was written by Aaron Conners in 1995. It differs slightly in details from the game, but the overall story is the same.

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Radio theater

When plans for a new game fell through, Chris Jones and Aaron Conners, produced a series of au-dio dramas in 2001, to continue the storyline. The radio theater stars several of the original characters and voices from the games, including Jones as Tex Murphy. They were financed out-of-pocket by the creators and released for free as digital downloads. These episodes continue to be available through The Unofficial Tex Murphy website. A new series of six more episodes have been announced to accompany the upcoming Project Fedora as a reward for quali-fying backers.

Novelization

Two novels of from the Tex Murphy universe was created by the game’s original writer Aaron Con-ners.

Under a Killing MoonISBN: 0-7615-0420-6Publisher: Prima PublishingFirst Published: April 1996Pages: 328

The novelization of Under a Killing Moon was released in 1996. Although the basic plot, characters, and setting remain mostly the same, it differs sig-nificantly from the game, pro-viding a great deal of extra information, new characters, character deaths, and more detailed character motivations related to the main plot involving the Moonchild, while removing scenes and characters from the game that did not re-late to the Moonchild plot, creating a more singular Chandler-esque mystery novel. The final ending of the game (meeting The Colonel and Eva in the bar, and dancing lessons with Delores Lightbody) is also changed to continue this style.

The Pandora DirectiveISBN: 0-7615-0068-5Publisher: Prima PublishingFirst Published: Sebtember 1995Pages: 325

Aaron Conners wrote The Pan-dora Directive as a novel first, which the computer game was then based on. While there are differences between the two, the novel serves as a great companion piece for fans of the

the game, as it elaborates upon and fleshes out many of the same characters and plot points.

The plot of the story is as followed; Project Blue-book was the official government investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects that examined, among other things, the “incident” at Roswell, New Mex-ico. The official story has been told: the Roswell crash was a balloon, nothing more. Project Blue-book was closed. But the real story is that Project Bluebook became Project Blueprint and helped start World War III. How does Tex get involved? Well, he meets an old Cubana-smoking gent who’s looking for a missing friend. It doesn’t seem like much of a case at first, but then Tex Murphy has never been very good at staying out of trouble...and this time he’s in for lots of trouble!

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