Mean Streets

Other Titles:
Tex Murphy 1
Maker:
Access Software
Year:
1989
Systems:
Amiga (OCS) / PC (DOS) / PC (VGA) / PC (EGA)
Genres:
Adventure / Action
Tags:
Mystery / Science Fiction / FMV
Language:
English
Median Rating:
4/5

Thoughts by Mr Creosote (30 Jun 2003) – Amiga (OCS)

Einstein was wrong: the people living after World War 3 (which happened in 1998) aren’t fighting with pointed sticks and stones. It’s still guns. The whole world is in fact still very much the same as we know it. If it weren’t for a few details: half of the population has mutated because of the high radiation and people are using flying ‘speeders’ instead of cars.

Tex Murphy isn’t a mutant, but he has such a speeder. That’s the only modern thing about him, though. His trenchcoat, his whole appearance would fit more into the 1930s than in the present of 2037. To complete the cliché, he’s a private investigator living in San Francisco (Los Angeles would probably have been too obvious…). Who else but a good-looking, young woman could possibly walk into his office and provide him with an assignment?

The woman’s father, Professor Carl Linsky, has jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. The police believes it to be suicide, and all evidence backs their theory: there is a goodbye-note and a witness said there was nobody else close when the old man jumped. Sylvia, his daughter, doesn’t believe that, though. She’s convinced he’s been murdered. But what are her motives? She doesn’t seem to care much about the death of her father, but more about the $1000000 life insurance which is null and void in the case of suicide – but not in the case of murder.

So… was it the daughter who killed her father to get the money, faking suicide without considering that this will prevent the sum from being paid? Was it one of the Professor’s love interests? Is it somehow related to his job? Or was it really just plain suicide?

Sounds like the plot of an ordinary mystery adventure game. Mean Streets may be an adventure game, but it isn’t ordinary. Instead of plain point & click or text adventure, what we get is a mixture of adventure elements (like interviewing suspects and witnesses and searching locations), action (gun fights) and flight simulation (travelling with the speeder).

If there is another game which comes close to the idea, it’s Mercenary. Like there, you start out in your flying vehicle, looking at the surroundings in 3D view, and travel through the world with the help of navigation coordinates. Arriving at the target locations, you talk to people or get objects for later use. That’s where the similarity ends, though. Questioning people and collecting evidence plays a much larger role in Mean Streets. The traveling can even be skipped by using the auto pilot. And I guess everybody’s happy about it since the flying is… boring. There is no other word to describe it.

There is still the gun fighting, though, and these sequences can’t be avoided or turned off. In very simple arcade style, you’re walking from left to right while an unlimited number of thugs armed with pumpguns enter the picture from the right. Shut your brains down and shoot your way through. Good that it’s so easy. That way, it at least doesn’t frustrate the player – because it’s certainly not fun.

The adventure game parts are fortunately the core of the game. There are basically three types of locations: interviews, searchable and red herrings. Questioning someone, a photographed portrait of this character appears on the screen (one of the game’s designers appears as Tex Murphy by the way). You can ask them anything – provided you know what to ask about, because you’re not given choices, but you have to type the topics in with the keyboard. If you don’t get the information you want, you can threaten or bribe people, but that isn’t a wildcard, either, of course. When there is nobody around, you can search a location. In these scenes, you see Tex like in most adventure games, walk around the room and leave no stone unturned. Finally, all you get on some certain locations is some text without the possibility to do anything. It usually means you’ve come to a dead end.

On the technical side, you’ll often find this game referred to as revolutionary. That’s really exaggerated. The use of digitized photos is nice, but it wasn’t new. There are a few lines of recorded speech, but those of of very low quality technically, considering the sound capabilities of the Amiga. The music is nice, but only plays rarely. Overall, the technical ideas of this game were certainly ahead of its time, but the execution is average at best.

What really matters is the contents, though. Skip the flying, sit through the fights and what you get is a mystery adventure game with a nicely developing storyline. It’s long enough to keep you occupied for a while, but that’s really because of its length. The difficulty is quite low, you just always need to go to every place you’re told about and ask the right questions there. The few puzzles (less than 5 in the whole game) would have been very easy, but you’re also always told about the solution (problem: “I need at least a 9 foot pole to get this”; next room: you find a ten foot pole). If you’re the lazy type who is not used to take some notes, you’ll quickly be lost, on the other hand. Just like a real detective would be.

Thoughts by perfectnarcosis (10 Nov 2017) – PC (DOS)

The first installment of a very nostalgic series to some: Mean Streets is the first game in the world of Tex Murphy. A deadbeat detective from the typical Film Noir era who gets himself caught in his first adventure set in the year of 2037.

SYNOPSIS

Tex is asked to delve into the death of a beautiful young woman’s father, Carl Linsky. Ruling out the ‘official report’ as suicide, Tex embarks on a story to prove the young woman’s theory that he was murdered. A story full of intrigue and a giant web of lies and secret agendas.

SPEEDER

If you play this game for the first time, take your time to go through the manual first. As with any older games, jumping straight in without any knowledge will make the experience quite hard and might result in an early exit.

The first thing you end up in is Tex’s awesome looking Speeder, which looks somewhat of a crossover between a Lamborghini and a DeLorean. The Speeder part of the game is basically a simulator, where if you’re airborn it handles like a plane (rolling and banking) but if you’re on the ground it handles more like a car.

Start off by using the featured Auto Pilot by inputting your Navigation Code (or NC) into the computer and engage the Auto Pilot. Enjoy your first rides like this and learn a bit by looking at all the instruments.

NOTE: using the Auto Pilot will enable the Speeder to go MUCH faster than you ever would be able to in Manual mode, up until the last 10–12 miles. It’s always advised to use it for travel distances over 10–12 miles, then switch to Manual when you’ve slowed down.

STORY

Mean Streets is actually very well written and thought out. The stereotypes are very familiar and lean strong on the film Noir genre. The more you play the more you start to understand what kind of world you’re living in, and every step takes you closer to finding out the truth of what happened to Carl Linsky. Along the way you will seriously laugh often, enjoying some funny dialogue or interaction combinations (see PUZZLES) which lead to unique responses from Tex.

DIALOGUE, COMBAT & PUZZLES

Once you’ve arrived at a location and step out of your Speeder you will often end up meeting a person who you can ask questions to by typing in other people’s NAMES or a select few TOPICS that have conveniently been added to the manual. There will be times where you need to lean on Tex’s Bribe skills, and others where you can try to Threaten people.

SAVE YOUR GAME OFTEN BEFORE STEPPING OUT OF YOUR SPEEDER! WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING!

Sometimes after arriving at a location, you have to pass through 2 levels of rather simplified combat. Doing so will consume Ammunition, so fight carefully and save often.

Finally, there will be a handful of locations where you can actually walk around and use a very interesting system to LOOK, GET, MOVE, OPEN, TURN ON/OFF or TASTE objects of interest. The puzzles are straight forward, but the main rule to follow is to leave “no stone unturned”..

Dying is something that seems to ONLY happen during the PUZZLES. Be wary of dangerous situations!

BOUNTY HUNTING

In order to gain more cash there are a few Coordinates (not Navigation Codes!) you can fly to and fight through some tougher battles. I actually haven’t done so because I didn’t need extra cash, having made quite enough by pawning everything of great value that I found while doing the Puzzle areas.

GRAPHICS

Considering it was made in 1989, the graphics are actually really nice. During dialogue, digitized photographs are used and can be seen animating. The simulator uses a nice technique (similar to Stunts) to draw depth and make objects appear big or small depending on distance. Last but not least, the pixel drawn Puzzle locations are of good quality as well.

SOUND

One of the early games to use software called ‘RealSound’, which enabled the use of the PC Speaker to play pre-recorded sounds without the use of any additional hardware. This was pretty revolutionary at the time, considering most other games only used the ‘beeps’ a speaker could output to generate music or SFX. The amount of unique sounds in Mean Streets is limited however, so expect to hear certain music more often. However, finding more unique sounds (or dialogue) is a reward in itself.

CONCLUSION

+ Enjoyable story and characters + Great world building and ambience + Cool Speeding around in 3D San Francisco, L.A. and Vegas (amongst others) + Use of PC Speaker to play voiceovers and pre-recorded sounds + Unique interaction system tree

Screenshots

Amiga (OCS)

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PC (DOS)

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Box

Amiga (OCS)

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PC (DOS)

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