Mean Streets
Description official descriptions
Private detective Tex Murphy is hired to investigate the murder of a university professor. It turns out that he was one of eight scientists involved in Project Overlord, a mission to remotely control people. Tex soon learns of the deaths of other related figures. Suspects may include the British intelligence head, a surveillance company owner, and the professor's daughter.
Tex's first adventure takes the player through the seedy West Coast world of 2033, a setting that combines futuristic elements with film noir and "hardboiled" detective fiction styles. The game's main adventure portions are icon-driven, with object puzzles less significant than detective deduction and character interaction. Characters are represented by digitized photos.
Mean Streets features dozens of characters to interact with by asking questions or offering bribes. Fights often arise, but a diplomatic approach is more successful with characters whose guilt is unproven. Although it is largely an adventure game, travel between cities involves piloting Tex's Lotus Speeder in a flight simulation section. The game also contains side-scrolling action sequences where Tex has to eliminate a number of enemies before being able to proceed to the destination.
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (DOS version)
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Reviews
Discussion
| Subject | User | Date |
|---|---|---|
| C64 Mean Streets US Gold Box | Edwin Drost (5444) | 2017-01-27 14:26:49 |
Trivia
Cover art
The US box art bears a striking resemblance to Blade Runner's original theatrical poster.
Graphics
Mean Streets was the world's first popular PC game to fully support VGA graphics. Not content to stop there, it was also the world's first PC game to also support EGA, CGA, and Hercules graphics modes with real-time quantization and dithering. ("Real-time references the fact that they didn't include pre-converted graphics, which would have taken up twice the disk space, but rather they converted each graphic as it was loaded to fit the graphics mode being used.) Most games that supported VGA didn't support any lower standard at all because it was considered too difficult to convert graphics utilizing 256 colors down to 16 or even 4 for EGA or CGA.
Music
The Mean Streets intro music is also used in a TV commercial. Access plagarised music in the past; see the trivia for Crime Wave for another example.
Remake
In 1998, Access released Overseer which is a remake of Mean Streets.
References
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. The robot in Cal Davis's Secret Lab is a reference to Lost In Space. The scene where you meet Larry Hammond is a spoof of a joke in The Bob Newhart Show. Also, the president is called Michael J. Fox, and a final joke refers to the first Back to the Future film he starred in.
Awards
- Computer Gaming World
- November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #139 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
- ST Format
- Issue 01/1991 – #4 Best Adventure Game in 1990
Information also contributed by Blood, Brolin Empey, hydra9 and Ricky Derocher
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Related Sites +
-
Crapshoot
A humorous review on PC Gamer -
Walkthrough on Games Over
Full Walkthrough for Mean Streets
Identifiers +
- MobyGames ID: 221
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Eurythmic.
Atari ST added by Martin Smith. Windows, Macintosh, Linux added by lights out party. Commodore 64, Amiga added by Katakis | カタキス.
Additional contributors: Jeanne, Patrick Bregger, Jo ST, firefang9212.
Last modified February 27th, 2023.