Mean Streets (DOS)

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Description

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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "Tex Murphy: Mean Streets" -- Steam release

Part of the Following Groups

• Protagonist: P.I. (Private Investigator)
• Setting: 2030s
• Setting: City - San Francisco
• Tex Murphy series
• Visual technique / style: Digitized sprites

User Reviews

A very good entry to the Tex Murphy series, complete with some humor thrown in for good measure	Katakis | カタキス (42880)
The early days of Tex Murphy, back when he had the slowest car in the galaxy...	Zovni (10627)
Interesting story with mostly tedious gameplay	Ingold (134)
An absolute classic.	Toka (16)

Critic Reviews

Techtite	2000		100
The Games Machine (UK)	Apr, 1990	87 out of 100	87
Adventure Classic Gaming	Aug 06, 1999	4 out of 5	80
Attack	Jan, 1991		70
GameZebo	Jun 22, 2009		70
Retro Archives	Jun 24, 2018	13.5 out of 20	68
Power Play	May, 1990	53 out of 100	53
Adventure Gamers	May 19, 2002		50
Top Secret	Jun, 1991	Unscored	Unscored
Computer Gaming World (CGW)	Jan, 1990	Unscored	Unscored

Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
C64 Mean Streets US Gold Box	3	Edwin Drost (4371) Jan 31, 2017

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

Related Web Sites

• Crapshoot (A humorous review on PC Gamer)
• Walkthrough on Games Over (Full Walkthrough for Mean Streets)