Martian Memorandum

aka: Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum
Moby ID: 222
DOS Specs
Buy on Windows
$5.99 new on Steam

Description official descriptions

Martian Memorandum is the sequel to Mean Streets. Six years have found the private investigator Tex Murphy broke, down on his luck, and seriously in need of a new case. He gets a call from Marshall Alexander, a business tycoon who owns most of the industry on Mars. It seems his daughter Alexis has run away from home, and taken "something else" with her. Marshall won't say what that something else is, but he is willing to pay handsomely to get it (and his daughter) back.

Unlike its predecessor, the game contains only adventure gameplay, removing flight simulation and action sequences. Basic gameplay mechanics are very similar to those of the first game, placing interrogation and choices above object-based puzzles. Verb commands are used to interact with the environment, while interrogating suspects usually involves selecting conversation options. Making a wrong choice may sometimes prematurely end the game or render it unwinnable.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (DOS version)

10 People

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 66% (based on 11 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 47 ratings with 5 reviews)

Digitized mutants get too much stage time

The Good
Martian Memorandum is the second Tex Murphy game and the sequel to Mean Streets, a technologically impressive - though not always fulfilling gameplay-wise - adventure set in a colorful future combining post-apocalyptic traits with a bit of film noir.

Mean Streets boasted 256-color graphics and an ingenious usage of the PC beeper (they managed to reproduce speech using nothing but those beeps). Like that game, the Martian Memorandum is, above all, a technological showcase, though on a smaller scale. Following the footsteps of Countdown, the game proudly presents video snippets of live action and rudimentary (but still very impressive) voiceovers. The graphics - digitized for most locations, hand-painted for the exotics of Mars - are strong as well, bringing many of those interesting areas to life with their detail.

Dialogues are a simplified version of the complex conversations in Countdown: most of the time, each response you choose leads to more branches, of which only one would normally achieve the desired effect, allowing you to continue the game. It is nice to have this kind of tension, though it is really overused here. Those dialogues were clearly supposed to be the highlight of the game; but there are also the usual adventuring screens where you have to find the right items needed for progression. These are somewhat more varied than in Mean Streets, with some proper inventory puzzles and more adventure-oriented setpieces (avoiding lasers, crawling through vents, etc.) replacing the first game's repetitive flying and goon-shooting sequences.

The Bad
Much like its "older brother" Countdown, the second installment in the Tex Murphy series seems to focus on audiovisual effects more than on actual gameplay. The biggest problem of the game is its schematic, formulaic progression. It is as if the developers decided that a few gameplay gimmicks were enough to build an adventure game upon, without paying attention to pacing and general flow.

Martian Memorandum is built like a detective investigation, but one following either of the two very simplified procedures: search a room, find the right item; or, discover the correct way through a conversation to open another location either of the first or the second kind. The entire game is, essentially, composed out of those segments - which make perfect sense within the frames of a detective mystery, but feel disjointed and unrewarding in an adventure game.

Areas often confine you to one screen only; there is no sense of movement in the game, because most of the time you'll "jump" to new locations instead of actually moving there. Many locations consist of just one character portrait and dialogue lines, almost like in Japanese adventures. The path through the game is linear and you often feel your investigation is on rails. These repetitive activities quickly get old, and the more you play the less you care which of the myriads of mutants you've been talking to is the real culprit. Puzzles are mostly forgettable, and the clunky interface combined with a few serious pixel-hunting issues doesn't help at all.

Just like Countdown, the game also struggles to find the right tone. The story involves a series of murders and a global conspiracy, yet the game stubbornly insists on a campy B-movie style with particularly cheesy mutants and rather lame attempts at humor. The detective line itself starts well, but becomes disappointingly predictable as the game goes on. There is something dry in the way the plot is being served to you, and the protagonist seems to be curiously detached from what is happening around him.

The Bottom Line
Martian Memorandum is a solid and technologically impressive title - but as an adventure game, it is somewhat lackluster. It also doesn't really improve upon Countdown in any significant way.

DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2014

Those streets don't look so mean no more...

The Good
Tex Murphy continues to elude plagiarism lawsuits and commercial success in Martian Memorandum, the second game in the now famous "Tex Murphy Mysteries" series. As luck would have it, Murphy's latest adventures didn't have the successful results he was expecting (sort of the same that happened with the game) and now, years after the events played in Mean Streets Tex still finds himself without the money, girls and fame he thought was in store for him.

However if you're barely familiar with the "Noir" detective films and novels of the 40's/50's you'll know this is the perfect setup for a classic private eye-plotline that starts with an innocent enough missing persons case and turns into a gigantic conspiracy with the fate of an entire planet hanging in the balance... Well, actually I think I'm making the plot sound weaker than it is, and the fact is that the story in Martian Memo is actually really good, surpassing by far the plot of the original game, with much more original twists and situations (even if it seems like a ripoff of Total Recall at certain points).

The game makes a series of improvements from the original that can be summed up under the "Ok, we'll just make an adventure game this time" design mantra Access seemed to abide to with this game. Gone are the genre-bending and freeform elements from the original classic and instead the game is a full-blown point'n click adventure game like the million others or so that got released in 90's. Of course I wouldn't be writing this in the "good" section unless they made an improvement, and the fact is that they do: The game is a much more dynamic experience, without any of the "dead air" moments you had in the original when you had to waste time disabling alarm systems, shoot down stupid goons for cash and have endless flights from one corner of the universe to the other.

In this new game Tex "warps" from location to location using a location menu. Gameplay and gameworld exploration is handled completely via the mouse and the game, while keeping the lead-following/clue-gathering detective oriented gameplay concept, adds much more inventory/deduction puzzles to appease adventure fans. Far from dragging down the action, these puzzles actually increase the overall gameplay value, as the game is no longer just a dot-connecting exercise.

Technology-wise the game is a major improvement from the original, with gorgeous VGA graphics that include even more digitized images and animations than before and much better soundtracks and sfxs courtesy of the now common soundcard proliferation for pcs which rendered such amazing concepts as Access RealSound technology redundant.

The Bad
For as nice as the switch to a full point'n click adventure gameplay is, you still miss the original elements that made Mean Streets such an unique title, and there's no question that the switch also limits the gameplay depth considerably. Plus it hasn't been a completely smooth transition, as the game has plenty of dead ends in which not having a specific item or having missed a key event gets you stuck, with your only hope being reloading and hoping that you get whatever you missed this time. There's a nice online hint system, but it hardly helps when your problem lies buried in the past.

The Bottom Line
Tex Murphy returns, and this time he brings full-mouse support with him!

Martian Memorandum is the perfect introductory title for the Tex Murphy games, as it's linear point'n click adventure gameplay perfectly (well, near perfectly) follows the classic adventure template and gives you a perfectly coherent experience without the hit-and-miss elements of the original (and dated) Mean Streets. Fans of the series however will probably argue that it would have been a better idea to fix what was wrong in the original instead of just getting rid of it, but what the heck... if it gets you a better storyline and tighter gameplay then I'm all for it.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2005

Monkey Island meets Sam Spade.

The Good
This game is about Tex Murphy, a failed P.I even after solving the case of Syliva Linsky's father's murder in Mean Streets. You are called by Marshal Alexander to find his daughter, this turns into something much much bigger as you find that people have bigger things cooking that it first seems. The game supports fairly realistic graphics, some good some bad, some voice that is fairly good and a strong plot, with lots of surprises.

The Bad
The graphics in the search parts of the game are pretty bad, you spend lots of time hitting the "pick up" button at various things till somthing happens. The puzzles are a bit too easy at times and at other times make it too easy to fail. Such as a puzzle where you have to get up on to a platform with a monkey wrench by using large magnet that is hauling chunks of metal. You have to step up at the right time or fall into a pit. Then there is the annoying maze that gives you no intications of where you are on the map.

The Bottom Line
Apart from annoying flaws and rather shoddy animations the game still holds out well in my mind. A good game for people who like Spy thrillers

DOS · by Sam Hardy (80) · 2001

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Tex Murphy

As in all other Tex Murphy games, principal designer Chris Jones plays the titular character. However, this is the last title in which he remains silent.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Mean Streets + Martian Memorandum
Released 2009 on Windows, 2012 on Macintosh, 2015 on Linux
Mean Streets
Released 1989 on DOS, Linux, 2014 on Windows...
The Martian: Official Game
Released 2015 on iPhone, iPad, Android
Martian Raider
Released 1982 on VIC-20
The Pandora Directive
Released 1996 on DOS, 2009 on Windows, 2014 on Linux
Under a Killing Moon
Released 1994 on DOS, 2009 on Windows, 2014 on Linux
Bagitman
Released 1983 on Commodore 64, TRS-80 CoCo
Martian
Released 1979 on Exidy Sorcerer
Martian
Released 2001 on Windows

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 222
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Eurythmic.

Windows, Macintosh, Linux added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Travis Fahs, Patrick Bregger, firefang9212.

Game added August 16, 1999. Last modified August 14, 2023.