Mean Streets is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Access Software for MS-DOS in 1989 exclusively in North America. It was ported to the Commodore 64, Atari ST, and Amiga in 1989 and 1990 by The Code Monkeys. Atari ST and Amiga ports were only released in Europe. The game, set in a dystopian cyberpunk neo-noir world, is the first in the series of Tex Murphy mysteries; its immediate sequel is Martian Memorandum. In 1998, Mean Streets was remade as Tex Murphy: Overseer.
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Technically, Mean Streets was very innovative game for its time, featuring 256 color VGA graphics, digitized PC speaker sounds, and even a well-coded flight simulator based on the engine used in Echelon.
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The player plays the role of Tex Murphy, a down-and-out private investigator living in post-apocalyptic San Francisco. Tex is hired by a beautiful young woman named Sylvia Linsky to investigate the death of her father, Dr. Carl Linsky, a professor at the University of San Francisco. Prior to his death, Carl would not talk to his daughter about the secret project he was working on, and days later, he was seen falling off the Golden Gate Bridge. Sylvia suspects murder, but the police say it was routine suicide. To help get him started, Tex is given $10,000 and a few leads. The player is referred to the game's manual for a list of their leads.
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