Tex Murphy: Mean Streets – the first steps of the non -pound noir detective

I will not write what the game was done by the company Access Software for MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Amiga, which Bruce Carvel and Chris Jones founded in 1982, and that MEAN Streets is an adventure detective in the world of a post-serving future. You yourself will read on Wikipedia.

But what I would like to tell about is this:

The already mentioned Chris Jones, it is in this game that he first appears as the same non-paste neo-naoe detective Tex Murphy. Although specifically in the Mean Streets, the contribution of him as an actor is small: a pair of images in the game, the face is on the cover, but in the subsequent parts where they screwed the real video, not a slide show, he went into all the money. Chris played this role up to Tesla Effect, that is, he became the hallmark of the series. Here is such a co -owner of the company, game designer and actor. Talent.

Mean Streets is one of the first games with Realsound technology, which provides a reproduction of a 6-bit digitized audio in PCM format on the dynamics of the PC using the PWM drive, which allows you to program the amplitude of the displacement of the dynamics. (Wikipedia). Difficult, yes? If in a simple way, before in computers there was only a 2-bit sound, for comparison, now it is 16 bit and above. By ear, he was perceived incredibly shitty, the recorded human speech was difficult to make out through constant distortion and noise. In order not to torment your ears, it was necessary to buy an expensive sound map. Therefore, playing with good Audio on the PC at that time was a luxury. So, Realsound allowed to turn 2 bits into 6 without large costs. Also not super -quality, but much better. For the most meticulous there is a patent of US5054086 A, you can find on the Internet.

This is how the voice of votes of different bitterness sounds

From “Secret Documents” it is known that the private detective Tax Murphy was invented for the amateur film “Plan 10 from the open cosmos” which, according to the initial idea, was supposed to be a mere masterpiece, but due to constant problems: theft of a camera and film, horseradish, lack of sound and poor acting, turned into a troshanin non-verbal. Apparently, everyone was so dumb to show anyone that it never managed to find anywhere on the Internet. And perhaps this is just a bike, because the only site with the mention of this film is a fan wiki, where a completely different movie with the same name, released 5 years later, is as an illustration. If you stumbled upon the “Plan 10 from the Open Cosmos” of 1989, write about this in the comments.

But I have sex advertising by phone, under the main topic Mean Streets

The entry is over, we move on to the game itself

Before I first launched Mean Streets, expected a classic school quest with management only from the keyboard, hopelessly outdated graphics, riddles, which only reptilians to solve the power. Before the second screen, the game met expectations. And then … a cultural shock. She just knocked out of the clip, mentally destroyed and knelt down.

On the second screen pixel tex Murphy gets into the car, the game decides to tell about himself: I, actually … Avia Simulator. It was impossible to foresee such a setup. I’m not joking, a real aircraft system, where I need to navigate the devices, monitor the height and position of the spider relative to the horizon. It is still good that I played the version for DOS, the control 64 is more complicated and there really is an aviation joystick to cope with the flying machine. Eh, if I would be a gigachad-gamer from 1989, I wouldn’t have led an eyebrow, because they still knew that the previous game Access Software was Echelon-Avia Simulator.

It seems that the https://gamblingdata.net/casinos/voodoo-casino/ guys-developers decided to kill two birds with one stone: by the finished basis of the aircraft system, fasten the concept of Blaidranner. And what, Descard had a flying car, so let Murphy be. It’s like in the film!

There is nothing to look at, the poster Mean Streets is completely different from the same Bladerunner-a. We pass by, do not linger

After a few minutes of poking in the buttons, control became subject to me. The only thing was embarrassed by the absence of a speedometer, but in fact it was not needed, the speeder is so slow that even the turtle moves faster.

Management is half a bastard, the main difficulty lied in front of. If Murphy has a speeder, then, obviously, you need to fly somewhere on it. And this is a good question! There are no tips in the game. There is a map and a line for entering certain navigation codes. What kind of codes and where to get them, the game does not explain. She just throws you into the water, but you will learn to swim yourself somehow. I floundered as much as I could, but in the end I went to the bottom like a stone. On this I threw Tex Murphy: Mean Streets.

In fact, no, the story has not ended. I began to overcome curiosity: people somehow passed why I could not? After several requests in Google, a great secret was revealed to me: ancient protection against piracy.

In those distant times, the PC games were released on the disketts. In particular, Mean Streets was in 2 formats: five 5.25 or three 2.5 inch, while copying data from one flexible disk to another was not difficult, there was no protection, but the game was worth 60 dollars, taking into account inflation, all 120 modern green. Of course, this state of affairs did not suit publishers and developers, they crushed their brains and came up with the following technique: they released a paper guide, without which the game could not be held, and since there was no Internet, and the copy apparatus did not stand at the house, it simply did not make sense in the pirates.

As it turned out, in the folder with the installed game, a guide in the format of PDF was calmly lying. In it I found the first navigation codes. Actually, in the game an open world, you can fly anywhere, another thing is that, in addition to points of interest in this world, there is nowhere to go. If you really want to, you can even get to the final location from the very start of passage, you just need to know the corresponding code, though it will not be enough to reach the final of one code, so you will not be able to bake. All the same, it’s not bad for the game of 1989, impressive. What can not be said about how this world looks – just a set of pixels in which, with a very good imagination, you can see houses, pyramids, bridges, seas. And with bad only pixel interference.

After you figured out the main gameplay (the flights are really the base – most of the game you just fly from point to point.) you can go to the rest of the gameplay sections.

The first section, entertaining – survey of witnesses

We have to talk with very different people, ranging from ordinary scientists, lawyers and other employees, ending with sales policemen, bandits, and other mutants. I wonder that there are no pre -prepared issues in the game. As you pass, you need to find key topics yourself, which you should ask and enter them with your hands from the keyboard.

Some interlocutors answer questions without any problems and do not cause inconvenience, but you have to work with others. Any suspicious personalities like to keep their mouth shut, so you have to knock these same teeth. After this, they immediately unleashed languages. And if gross power does not give a result, Tex always has a gingerbread in his pocket – a thick wallet, many falls to money, so you can’t do without a bribe. But after receiving green bills, they sing like nightingales in the wedding season. It is worth a hurry with questions, in the post -core world witnesses do not live for a long time, they catch a bullet at a glance. As a result of such sincere, but stressful conversations, new navigation codes appear in our notebook, setting off on which we cross the second section.

Section Second, uncomfortable, but interesting – search

On the duty of his profession, Murphy has to search the crimes of crimes, bandits and just suspicious corners. Taxa is not always waiting with the doors with an armored and open hugs, so you just have to break out like a real robber and slow down everything upside down. Of course, on the way of a private detective there are achievements of civilization, such as alarm. Therefore, almost every such level is a task for speed and quick wits. It is necessary for the allotted time to find a hidden switch and neutralize the hated technique, otherwise the police will make a boo and game, as they say, Over. After this adrenaline race, you can take a breath and take care of evidence and all useful.

Management in Mean Streets, as the Tractor was used to say. The mouse in those days has not yet been an obligatory accessory, so you have to use only the keyboard. What is inconvenient in itself, so the number of actions with each thing in sight goes off scale: it can be inspected, take, shifted, turned on/off and even tasted and all these actions must be used. Otherwise, you will miss something and long hours, or even the days you will guess where to move on.

And if you have to live every action, then why not add an unexpected end to the most ridiculous of them. For example, you can lick the freezer and stick to it with your tongue, touch the mousetrap and pinch your finger, tinch with the wiring and get a charge of electric vigor, and if you put your hand in an aquarium with hungry piranhas, then nothing good will happen. After such suffering, we move on to the third section.

Section third, stuffy – firearm

It really turns out that if many activities are introduced into the game, then some will be worse than the rest. And then a shooter from the evil streets turned out to be no. The first problem – the stage with shooting appears unexpectedly, you don’t know when you stumble upon it, and if the character is killed, this is the end of the game at once, no additional lives. Let me remind you that this is 1989, there were no auto-preservations. The second problem – the shootings are first difficult, but then, when you have already bought the template, turn into incredibly boring.

How such stages are played at all? Tax Murphy appears, or rather, does not appear (who thought of putting a model outside the screen? Because of this, I did not at first understand what was happening). He has a pistol and a strip of life, you need to go from one edge of the screen to another in a straight line. Only 2 bandits with automatic machines go on the opposite side to Tex. Total 2 and always the same! And nothing more! What is the interest in this, shoot the same bandits, and only two? The one who made these levels generally understood that he was creating an uninteresting garbage? And this is already at a time when there were reference shooters on the prefixes, which are still well played. Moreover, the pattern of enemies is easily guessed, and you just walk along the path studied: 2 shots, crouched, waited for the enemy queue passed a few steps. And so they pass everything! At least looked at how it is done in other games. Murphy shooter turned out so -so.

Subjectively about the plot

The press called Tax Murphy a steeply-breed detective for his straightforwardness and perseverance. On the one hand, it is cool – such a man who goes to the end. But on the other, I noticed one controversial feature of the narrative. When the story develops from the investigation of strange suicide to the conspiracy of the megacorporation and the party of neo -Nazis of the future, eager to seize the world and make the entire population with obedient slaves, when Taex is sent letters with threats, and you have to break through the weapons through the crowds of thugs. Murphy does not reflect in any way. He, like a bull he saw a red rag, at the beginning of the game just goes forward without turning, without asking himself questions. But the story does not work like that, it is not clear, but why does it go so far that it moves? Of course, there are silent heroes in other games, but they have a motivation, if not even voiced by the protagonist himself, but the characters around him.

And Merphy has no motivation, except for the one that he was given at the very beginning, and then only a set of facts and addresses where you need to go. This despite the fact that Tax Murphy is not even silent like a fish.

There is no character without motivation, there is only a set of replicas, and therefore the plot of Mean Streets is uninteresting, no matter how it is twisted. I think that the authors of the game simply did not have enough experience to write something worthwhile, because before that they made shooters with air systems without plots. I hope, in the future, work on the mistakes. Now I really want to go through the remake of Mean Streets – Tex Murphy: overSEER and compare them.

And how to evaluate this Tex Murphy Mean Streets? If you look from the point of view of 1989, you get an excellent adventure game with a variety of gameplay, exciting plot, innovative technologies, and small roughnesses. And if you look from our days, this is some impassable pixel mess with excessively complex control and hopelessly outdated. But you know what, but I will not draw conclusions at all. I hope I said enough for you to compose your own picture, as they once said to SG: « And the conclusions remain with you ».

Thanks Denis Bolshakov, he is Jean Grey for the game provided. There would be no this blog without you!