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Post by Discoalucard on May 17, 2009 17:10:45 GMT -5
www.hardcoregaming101.net/texmurphy/texmurphy.htmThis is a series of five adventure games for the PC: Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Overseer. I first got into the series with Under a Killing Moon, but unfortunately my PC was quite awful at the time, and the numerous load times made playing it really annoying. DOSBox runs it (almost) beautifully though, so I finally played through it, as well as its sequels, which I hadn't played at all previously. The fourth game, The Pandora Directive, is largely considered the best, but Under a Killing Moon has its own cheesy charms that I kinda prefer. The first two games are really old, but were on the cutting edge of technology back in the day. Around the time I'd gotten Under a Killing Moon, I bought a budget CD release that had Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum. Mean Streets I could never get working even on my old 486, but I played through all of Martian Memorandum, which is OK, but shamed by anything Lucasarts, Sierra or otherwise.
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Post by cj iwakura on May 17, 2009 17:16:57 GMT -5
I think I've only played Under A Killing Moon, on the Sega CD? I had no idea it was part of a series.
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Post by ryochan on May 17, 2009 18:03:50 GMT -5
So you're aware:
One of Dolores' pics is missing on page 3, same with Sonny Fletcher, and Wanda Peck. This may be as you haven't uploaded them yet, or my browser, but I figure you'd like to know so you can check.
And it's really awesome they released a radio drama. Usually you only hear of things like that with Japanese Anime or Manga!
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Post by Weasel on May 17, 2009 22:02:10 GMT -5
Even the radio drama was never finished, unfortunately, as far as I can tell...Tex has always been my favorite protagonist of any video game.
Oh, I've actually got a (kind of stuttery) MP3 recording of the song Tex plays on the piano in UAKM.
"A Larsen grand piano? That's better than a Staufway!" -Tex regarding the piano, in a kind of subtle jab at The 7th Guest's antagonist, Henry Stauf
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2009 0:58:30 GMT -5
Awww, no mentions of the original US release of Overseer having the blinking LED light located on the front cover. I can't think of other games that did that. What a clever way to make people paying attention to the game in stores. (:  Anyway, great article. Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and Tex Murphy: Overseer are some of my most favorite adventure games. |
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Post by mercatfat on May 18, 2009 2:31:34 GMT -5
this is an awesome article about a series i've long wondered about but never been able to fully experience. it's hard to understate how huge MULTIMEDIA was in its day, especially if you didn't live through it. as it was the first technological megamovement (aside from maybe Virtual Reality) that i lived and slogged through, i try to be a bit of a historian on the subject. as we had purchased a 486 with a CD-Rom drive (right, i should note, on the cusp of the Pentium generation, which nearly cut the value of our computer in half instantly upon their introduction) my dad would routinely purchase CD-Rom Today! magazine, which (as you would expect) came with a CD-Rom full of demos and the like. The magazine though still held interest as i looked through both it and especially the ads, which would instill into my brain titles like Sam and Max Hit The Road several years before i would actually play them. Under A Killing Moon in particular was a game i wanted desperately after seeing in that magazine, but never got to even try until 2008... sadly to find out that it doesn't exactly perform well on modern systems and (at least in my experience at the time) some kinda buggy issues. at the very least, i couldn't shake the feeling i wasn't quite experiencing things right. i'm not the kind of dude who gets uppity over (for example) snes emulators not looking/playing/whatever 100% exactly like the real thing, but this definitely was an exception. once i can get a cd-rom drive for my pride and joy Libretto 50CT (think "netbook" in 1997 but still insanely tiny) that runs Windows 95, i look forward to finally experiencing this game as intended- disk swapping and all. i'm very curious though as to learning more about RealSound- how exactly did they pull off PCM through a PC Speaker? i've googled a bit and not come up with much helpful. as an addendum- did the C64 version of Mean Streets have RealSound? |
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Post by roushimsx on May 18, 2009 8:11:03 GMT -5
Hell. Fucking. Yes. I was introduced to the series via Under a Killing Moon as hell, but like you, my computer was shit at the time. I didn't get to properly play it until 1996 after I'd built a grossly overpowered machine for Duke Nukem 3D, and it totally blew me away (actually, both of them did). Pandora Directive was even better, but it saddens me that I've never gotten around to playing the DVD version of Overseer yet.  Much love for this article. UAKM and PD are two of my favorite adventure games of all time and it's a shame that they're as forgotten as they are. Hopefully Good Old Games will add them to the service at some point so that more people can get introduced to 'em. edit - The modern Nancy Drew series of games play a bit like the later Tex Murphy games, though with prerendered backgrounds instead of freely explorable 3D worlds. Oh, and really bad character models. I got introduced via Danger on Deception Island from the Target budget rack (thanks to this article), but it looks like Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake is better loved by most people (and recently the recipient of a jewel case rerelease for the Target budget rack!). You ought to give 'em a try sometime  |
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Post by Discoalucard on May 18, 2009 22:13:09 GMT -5
i'm very curious though as to learning more about RealSound- how exactly did they pull off PCM through a PC Speaker? i've googled a bit and not come up with much helpful. as an addendum- did the C64 version of Mean Streets have RealSound? I'm not sure about how it works. I know my crappy old Apple II could pull off speech synthesis with whatever crappy hardware that old thing had, so I guess the PC speaker isn't too far off. The C64 version does not have any voices. |
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Post by jorpho on Jun 9, 2009 23:35:46 GMT -5
All I remember of Under a Killing Moon is that Radio Shack had tons of demo disks for a while. (I vaguely recall that Star Trek: A Final Unity got similar treatment.) Awww, no mentions of the original US release of Overseer having the blinking LED light located on the front cover. I can't think of other games that did that. What a clever way to make people paying attention to the game in stores. (: Neat. I had a box of snacking cakes that had one of those once. Anyway, the actress playing Chelsea is still given as NAME on the last page. (Aside from that, the only grammar mistakes I could find were "and needs to avoid the constant patrols" on Page 3 and a few on Page 4: "are also pretty cool in principal", "mostly the fact that looks to have been shot on video", and "it doesn't quite stack to". Good job!  ) |
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Post by Dais on Jun 11, 2009 8:19:26 GMT -5
seeing this hit the front page brought back two childhood memories of Under A Killing Moon...
The first was watching my dad play it (he used to be big on adventure games) and seeing the scene where Tex is in search of the clown. After seeing what floated up from the acid vat, I was strangely afraid to flip up toilet lids for a while.
The other thing that haunts me is the Barney Museum pun.
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Post by jorpho on Jun 12, 2009 17:34:34 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2009 8:06:57 GMT -5
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Post by blackdrazon on Jun 16, 2009 13:59:26 GMT -5
Awesome. All 5 Tex Murphy games will be available from Good Old Games. Man it was bizarre when GOG started teasing an FMV game. I considered some others like Gabriel Knight ("But if they had Sierra, wouldn't they headline with one of their more famous games?"), Wing Commander ("But they say no one's guessed it yet, and that'd be ridiculous.") and other FMV games that came to mind ("Return to Zork? Shock Wave? Yeah, those are what I'd re-release first if I were Activision Blizzard or EA, that's for sure.  "). Frankly, the only reason I thought it would be impossible that GOG had Tex Avery was because it would be too weird that it would show up here and then a week later go back on sale. |
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Post by derboo on Dec 18, 2009 4:58:05 GMT -5
Part 1 and 2 are now available for free on GOG, but only until christmas eve.
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Post by roushimsx on Dec 18, 2009 6:50:23 GMT -5
Part 1 and 2 are now available for free on GOG, but only until christmas eve. and if you already own 'em, you can register for an alternate gift (actual gift currently unannounced). Probably a free $6 game or something from their catalog? We'll see! God, I love GOG |
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"). Frankly, the only reason I thought it would be impossible that GOG had Tex Avery was because it would be too weird that it would show up here and then a week later go back on sale.