Mean Streets

Mean Streets is a dystopian cyberpunk graphic adventure developed by Access Software for MS-DOS and Commodore 64 in 1989. Later, it was ported to the Atari ST and Amiga in 1990.

The game is the first installment in the Tex Murphy series, that would continue with Martian Memorandum, and is set in a dystopian cyberpunk neo-noir world.

The game follows the life of a private investigator, Tex Murphy. The game's protagonist lives in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where he is hired by a beautiful curvaceous woman named Sylvia Linsky; she wants to investigate her dad's death, which she finds to be mysterious and suspicious. Dr. Carl Linsky was a professor who jumped to his death off the Golden Gate Bridge. His daughter claims it to be murder and not something self-inflicted. The story of a tough cop going against the odd is pretty cool, but the storyline could have gone a bit deeper with more twists to it as the game line is almost too predictable.

Even if we consider Mean Streets an adventure, it's really a mix of genres. The game has bits of flight simulator involved in it - it seems that initially it was planned to be a flight simulator - in fact, you have to drive around in your high tech flying car quite often. There are also interrogation sections, an element of shooting you take the business up and personal, and finally, the actual graphic adventure section where you control Tex as he explores the different locations clearing them out room by room.

Probably because of the origins, or maybe because it was also developed for the Commodore 64, Mean Streets is entirely controlled with the keyboard.

It is important to note that the game was the first to implement VGA graphics, which means it was the first PC game with 256 colors. It was also one of the pioneers in bringing forth Real Sound, with digitalized dialogs. It was a dramatic change compared to computer-generated audio.

Overall, Mean Streets is a pretty good start to the Tex Murphy series. The gameplay can be a bit tedious sometimes, but the story, the graphics, and the music are great. A must for cyberpunk lovers.