Tex Murphy
| Tex Murphy | |
|---|---|
| Genres |
Adventure Mystery Tech Noir |
| Developers |
Access Software (1989-98) Big Finish Games (2014-present) |
| Publishers | Access Software (1989-98) Atlus (2014-present) |
| Platforms | MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga, Windows, OS X, Linux |
| First release |
Mean Streets 1989 |
| Latest release |
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure May 7, 2014 |
Tex Murphy is a series of adventure games designed by Chris Jones. The eponymous main character is portrayed in live-action by Chris Jones himself. He is characterized as a down-on-his-luck private investigator in a post-nuclear future San Francisco, borrowing tropes from both the film noir and cyberpunk genres.
Mean Streets is the first game in the Tex Murphy series. Unlike later games in the series, it features segments in a variety of genres, including adventure game sequences, side-scrolling action sequences, and an open-world flight simulator. It was notable at the time as one of the first commercially available games to use 256-color VGA graphics, as well as for its "RealSound" technology that allowed recorded digital audio to be played back without the need for an external sound card.
Martian Memorandum continues the Tex Murphy storyline, but features more traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay, with inventory-based puzzles and branching dialog trees. It uses digitized actors and features short bits of video during conversation, hinting at the FMV style employed in later games.
Under a Killing Moon marked a change in direction for the series. Costing over two-million dollars and four years of development, it used 3D graphics and full motion video to greatly expand both the gameplay and presentation. Aaron Conners was put in charge of writing duties for the first time, and he re-imagined the Tex character as a down-on-his-luck divorcee, struggling to find work as a private investigator. It featured real-time 3D graphics that were exceptionally detailed at the time, and was one of the first games to take advantage of systems with 16 megabytes of RAM in order to display higher resolution textures.
The Pandora Directive is the direct sequel to Under a Killing Moon. It uses the same engine as its predecessor, and features many of the same locations (some newly expanded), particularly on Tex's home street of Chandler Ave. It also features many recurring characters from the previous game, and continues the romantic plot between Tex and Chelsee Bando. It features very similar gameplay to Under a Killing Moon but introduces logic puzzles alongside the inventory and "jigsaw" puzzles of the previous game. It also features a branching storyline, with three main paths and seven unique endings, and allows for multiple solutions to some problems, particularly those involving money.
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Wikipedia