And again we’re taking a look at a game series, that like many others, started in the 80s or 90s (80s in this particular case), still continues to this day and became famous around its 3rd entry. But this time, it features perhaps the most famous private detective in computer gaming: Tex Murphy. I’m obviously talking about Mean Streets.

Mean Streets is an adventure game made by Access Software and originally released in 1989 for the Commodore 64 and DOS. It was ported the next year (in Europe only) for the Amiga and Atari ST. And it was re-released in 2014 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux by Night Dive Studios under the title Tex Murphy: Mean Streets.

But as always, let’s first look at the covers, shall we?

I love this cover! It’s very reminiscent of the original Blade Runner movie poster, with a shot of Chris Jones (the designer and face of Tex Murphy throughout the entire series) holding a gun over an image of a futuristic city along with his love interest.

But however, the European release had this interesting cover:

Where to begin? 1st, both the title and the art style definitely has a European urban sci-fi look, like taken from a Métal Hurlant magazine cover. 2nd, the characters depicted here look nothing like the game’s main characters. While the woman does resemble one of the lesser characters in the game, the man looks more like Conrad B. Hart, the protagonist of  Flashback. And 3rd, while the background is undoubtedly futuristic, it looks nothing like the entire series’ dystopian look. Overall, it’s a good cover, but as you’ll find out soon, it has little to do with the game.

But, it’s finally time to boot this sucker:

As you can read in the short intro text (or more detailed in the manual), you play as Tex Murphy, a down-on-his-luck private detective living in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, in the distant year of 2033. You’ve been hired by Sylvia Linsky (the blonde woman depicted on the cover and on the title screen) to investigate her father’s suicide, which she suspects of murder. Of course, the story spirals into something a lot bigger than a simple scientist’s death.

Right from the start, you’ll notice that Mean Streets isn’t a traditional adventure game, but more like a mix of different genres. We start with a flight simulator section (taken from another Access game, Echelon), where you take control of your speeder flying car and travel through the game’s various locations in California, but you can only land in landing pads. The controls aren’t too complicated and the speeder is indestructible, so there’s no risk of dying in this section.

However, you don’t actually need to control the speeder itself, because you can simply introduce the nav codes in the navigational screen and press “A” for the auto-pilot to take you there. This section occupies more or less 80% of the game and travelling greater distances can be somewhat boring. And also is the only part of the game where you can access the inventory and the save and load screens. You can also contact Vanessa, your secretary and Lee Chin, your informant, which brings us to the next section of the game.

Then we have the interrogation section, where you’ll contact the several characters in the game. You can ask them about other characters and locations by typing them perfectly (the game doesn’t recognise badly written words) and they’ll answer if they’re familiar with it. But sometimes they’re not willing to talk and then you have the option to either bribe them with money or threaten their physical integrity. But only one of these 2 options will work because people, when uncooperative, can only be bribed or threatened. Then after being bribed or threatened, they’ll reveal new information, like a name, or if you’re lucky, a nav code for a new location to explore, which brings us to the next 2 sections.

When arriving at a new location, sometimes you need to pass a shooting section, where you’ll take full control of Tex and have to cross 2 screens from left to right, shooting infinite mooks (that that look the same, there are only be 2 at a time and are apparently made of glass by the way they shatter when shot). Tex can duck to avoid the bullets and use the several obstacles to his advantage, although it’s easy to get stuck behind one while bullets whizz above him. The several shooting sections can range from easy to hard, depending on your skill. The secret in passing through them consists in timely dodges and pressing on.

After the shooting sections, you’ll reach the search section, the closest to an actual graphic adventure. In here, you again take full control of Tex, but this time, you only need to explore one screen where you’ll 1st need to walk to several places inside a room, like a table, a TV or a sofa, then click “Enter” to access a menu of several options. Then you can search through the several objects, open drawers, move objects or get items.

The only complaints I have about this section is that there’s no point and click interface, so you’ll need to do everything by the keyboard. You can’t access your inventory (in fact, any objects in your possession are used automatically when needed) and sometimes if there’s an object inside a small box and if you get the box before opening it, you’ll automatically get the object inside it, but then you need to go back to your speeder to access your inventory and examine the new object there. And also sometimes, you can trigger an alarm that gives you a limited time to find it and turn it off to continue the search or to leave the area. And the alarm resets every time you leave the area.

And apart from all this, you have limited money and ammunition. But you can always find more ammunition, money and objects that you can pawn for more money in the several search areas. But you need to be careful when pawning objects because although some obvious valuables can be pawned freely (like diamonds, necklaces, etc.) if you pawn an object that you might need later in the game, you have to buy it back for double the cash it was pawned off.

Or you can collect bounties on several criminals, whose map coordinates can be found on the manual that takes you to harder shooting sections. And the money can only be used for bribes (or to buy back some important object you accidentally pawned off), especially when dealing with Lee, as she’s an invaluable source of information but only gives it when paid.

And that’s the game’s mechanics. How is the rest of the game, you ask? Well, apart from being one of the 1st games to introduce VGA graphics, it also features Real Sound, which could produce small digitised speech samples through the PC speaker. Yes, really! And it isn’t badly garbled nonsense, it’s actually quality digitised speech, albeit quite short samples. But the rest of the sound effects are of equal quality, from the sound of the speeder’s engine to the sound of the shots. Unfortunately, there’s only one musical theme in the game but it’s actually a good one, in my opinion.

But back to the graphics, the game features some nice backgrounds, still images (albeit it repeats the latter a bit too much for my liking) and some digitised photos of the several characters you’ll meet in the game, including the mutants, with some gruesome visuals. The only complaints I have about the graphics is that Tex’s sprite is a bit EGA-looking when playing in VGA areas. It stands out like a sore thumb. And the animations are a bit jerky.

But for me, the best part of the game, it’s the story and characters. I love how the plot gets increasingly more and more complex and interesting as you play along and the majority of the characters are equally interesting, despite some red herrings and dead ends you can run into.

Still, I recommend reading the manual before starting the game, just to get your bearings and know where to start. And another thing: near the end, when you think you know the entire story, it still throws a good twist or 2 at you. Also, this game introduces a bit of the comedy that the series would be known for.

So in conclusion, Mean Streets is a worthy introduction to the Tex Murphy series, albeit it doesn’t know which genre wants to be, unlike its sequels, which are proper graphic adventures. And if you personally don’t enjoy flight simulators, you might not like them. Still, if you’re a Tex Murphy fan, I recommend it.

Mean Streets was remade in the 5th title of the series, Overseer, but it’ll get its own review later on for 2 reasons: 1st, in Overseer, the events of Mean Streets are told through flashbacks in a conversation with characters that were introduced in previous titles and 2nd, it uses game mechanics that were introduced in the 3rd game of the series, Under A Killing Moon.

So, where can you get this awesome game? Well, you can get it here on Steam or you can get here on GOG.com bundled together with the 2nd game of the series, Martian Memorandum. And if you’re looking for more stuff about the game, then you can go here to the unofficial website and get all sorts of goodies, like save states or a mod that lets you skip the flying sections.

So, do you like the Tex Murphy series? If so, what are your favourite titles of the series? Tell me by commenting below, on our Facebook page, our Twitter feed or on our new Steam group. See you all next time and until then, keep on playing!