Unofficial Tex Murphy

While searching the net for a walkthrough for MM (yes, I know, I know....) - I stumbled across this - http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/i ... andum_.php - it's an article from a 1991 computer magazine on the making of MM.

It's interesting how we think of 1994's UAKM as one of the first FMV games - this article uses that term in 1991 for MM! While playing the early section I did think the 'videos' of people talking to you were pretty impressive for the age!)

Which gets me thinking - Mean Streets in 1989 blew people away with its Realsound technology - actual music from a PC speaker! Plus flight sim and a good story. Then 1991 brings us more sound and snippets of what appear video. Then 1994 and UAKM and Access give us true FMV and an amazing 3D environment. I was blown away when I played UAKM in 1995.

We think of Access and Tex of giving us brilliant adventure games with great stories and humour - let's not forget the tech side - these guys moved the world of adventure gaming forward at each and every turn - and computer gaming has been poorer in the past ten years for their absence.

Hang on, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, nice article on MM.

(Topics can go off-topic - but not usually in the first post. Ah well.)

Makes you wonder what happened to people like Steve Witzel (and who he was).

Thanks for finding the link - interesting reading.

True point... While they weren't free flowing like the Video from UAKM or PD, etc, the Videos used in MM were real film footage... I guess it never really occurred to people to think of it as FMV because it was only used in the Speech and not as part of the actual game... Like you don't see Tex walk across the street or walk in and sit down in the Brew N Stew, stuff like that...

Article wrote:The designers of Martian Memorandum are striving to make it more than a game; they see it as an entertainment experience. The intention is to make the player identify with the hero and feel surprise, anger, delight, and tension as he or she solves the mystery.

And that is EXACTLY what they accomplished... Even more so with the Sequels...

Great article.

Definitely a blast from the past.

I love reading stuff like this. Thanks for posting.

Aaaahhhh those were the days. I'm such an old fogie when it comes to gaming.