DOS

Mean Streets

All in all, it’s a good, engrossing game. You really get into Tex’s shoes and experience the world around him. Not to say that it doesn’t have its problems, most notably the action sequences and the mediocre graphics, but if you really like adventure and/or detective games, you can easily over-look those few niggles. I give it a 4, which on my scale pretty much means a good game.

The premise behind Mean Streets is simple. What can be better than a modern sci-fi story like Blade Runner or an old-fashioned Agatha Christy murder mystery? The answer is obvious—the two combined! Take a post nuclear war Earth, a classic detective noir, a mysterious foe, a femme fatale, and an evil plot to destroy mankind; mix the ingredients, stir, and voila, you have a fantastic adventure game called Mean Streets!

If you're interested in the idea of casual future private investigating, Mean Streets is worth a play. Bring your notepad. If you're just not so sure, or want more of the Tex you've already come to love, Overseer revisits this story with greater skill and technology.

It takes a while to acclimate to the older control style (who knew not being able to use a mouse could be so disorienting?) and you'll sometimes have to hit buttons a few extra times to get them to register. You'll probably get a chuckle out of what used to pass for advanced graphics, too. There's no question that Mean Streets shows its age in any number of ways, but it's still a smart, well-crafted mystery that should please just about any armchair detective.

Ein Lob den Grafikern, die einen guten Digitizer hatten, Lob dem "Real Sound"-Feature, das den PC-Piepser vergessen lässt; Schimpf und Schande über die Spieldesigner, die fest geschlafen haben. Nur für Krimifans.

All respectable adventure gamers are familiar, at least in passing, with Tex Murphy's FMV adventures: Under a Killing Moon, the Pandora Directive, and Overseer. But before the days of CD-ROM, Tex Murphy was born into a world of grainy, poorly digitized VGA graphics and a new "RealSound" technique intended to revolutionize the industry. Here we take a look back at Mean Streets, the very first Tex Murphy game.