Tex Murphy
Encyclopedia
Tex Murphy is a series of five adventure game
s from Access Software, designed by Chris Jones
. The games feature the titular character, performed by Chris Jones himself. He is characterized as a down on his luck private investigator
in a dystopia
n future San Francisco.
San Francisco. The skies glow red with radiation
, and people who don't live in a better-sheltered city or lack genetic immunity to the radiation are disfigured and usually repulsive. Several San Francisco landmarks are still present, such as the Golden Gate Bridge
, Coit Tower
and Alcatraz, but most of them are completely abandoned; most damaged beyond repair from bombs in WWIII. The futuristic aspect borrows heavily from sci-fi books and films, most notably Blade Runner
for its flying cars and impossibly dense tenement
s.
films of Humphrey Bogart
. As such, he does his work in the style of archetypal film noir detectives such as Sam Spade
and Philip Marlowe
. He has remarkable skills of observation (always punctuated with humorous internal monologues); when examining objects or features, he hardly ever misses an important or unusual detail. However, he is also occasionally a bit clumsy and naive which gets him into trouble from time to time, as does his sarcastic wit.
He is honest and generally a good-natured fellow who suffers from a bad back, a little too much alcohol
(Bourbon
...neat, preferred) and a few too many blows to the head. He runs his Private Investigator's business out of his apartment at the Ritz Hotel
on Chandler Avenue in Old San Francisco "among the mutants and the destitute" where several businesses and friends reside, including his love interest, the mysteriously mutated newspaper stand owner Chelsee Bando. Aside from wishing for a respectable, not to mention high-paying, client all he'd like to do is earn her love and respect if he can just refrain from placing his admittedly not too bad smelling foot in his mouth.
and Aaron Conners released a 6 episode radio theater series in 2001
. The radio theater stars several of the original characters and voices from the games, including Jones as Tex Murphy. As of 2006
there were no plans to release any new episodes due to the costs. The previous episodes are currently available through The Unofficial Tex Murphy website.
of the series is no longer in business (Access Software was acquired by Microsoft
, who in turn sold the studio to Take-Two Interactive
, who shut it down). For years, the rights to Tex were held by Microsoft and later Take-Two, and efforts to revive the franchise were squashed. As of 2009, series creators Aaron Conners and Chris Jones have re-acquired the rights to past and future Tex games. Conners recently stated "I no longer think Tex's return is an 'if,' but a 'when.'"
Chris, Aaron, and other veterans of the series formed the independent developer Big Finish Games
. The site's main page was updated in April of 2009 with an announcement of "Project Fedora" as a future release. This has led to much speculation amongst the Tex Murphy fanbase that a new project in the form of a game is in the works as the fedora is a signature component of Tex's outfit, especially in light of the fact that this announcement coincided with the news of the rights to the series being secured.
On June 16 2009, Good Old Games re-released the first three games in the series as downloadable titles and put the last two into the "coming soon" section. The fourth game followed on June 30, and the fifth on the 21st of July. Some of the releases use DOSbox
to maintain compatibility with modern operating systems.
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s from Access Software, designed by Chris Jones
Chris Jones (Access Software)
Christopher Jones is a videogame designer and finance professional. He is most famous for his series of interactive movies starring the hard-boiled, out-of-his-time gumshoe Tex Murphy, played by Jones himself, a private investigator that lives in the San Francisco of the middle of the 21st...
. The games feature the titular character, performed by Chris Jones himself. He is characterized as a down on his luck private investigator
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
in a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n future San Francisco.
Games
- Mean StreetsMean Streets (computer game)Mean Streets is a dystopian cyberpunk noir adventure game that was released in 1989 for MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64. It was developed and published by Access Software...
(19891989 in video gaming-Notable releases:* October 3, Brøderbund releases the Prince of Persia game, the first in a series of games, noted for its advancements in animation....
) - Martian MemorandumMartian MemorandumMartian Memorandum is a dystopian cyberpunk/noir PC adventure game that was originally released in 1991 for PC. It was developed and published by Access Software. The game is the second in the series of Tex Murphy mysteries; its immediate sequel is Under a Killing Moon...
(19911991 in video gaming-Notable releases:*Microprose creates Civilization, Sid Meier's most successful game .*Electronic Arts releases James Pond 2 and Road Rash for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, starting a series of games that were popular in the 1990s....
) - Under a Killing MoonUnder a Killing MoonUnder a Killing Moon is the third installment in the Tex Murphy series of adventure games produced by Access Software. In Under a Killing Moon Tex again fights the forces of evil as he tries to stop a dangerous cult from destroying the world...
(19941994 in video gaming-Events:*Nintendo calls this year "1994: The Year of the Cartridge".*Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd is established and opened by Hiroshi Yamauchi and effectively ends Mattel Australia's distribution of Nintendo's products throughout Australia.*"Project...
) - The Pandora DirectiveThe Pandora DirectiveThe Pandora Directive is an adventure game for the PC. It takes place in the world of Tex Murphy, hero of Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Under a Killing Moon, and Tex Murphy: Overseer....
(19961996 in video gaming-Notable releases:*January 29 — Duke Nukem 3D, successor to the simple side-scrolling originals, and a genre-redefining title for first person shooters....
) - Tex Murphy: OverseerTex Murphy: OverseerTex Murphy: Overseer is the 5th installment in the Tex Murphy series of adventure games for the PC. In it, the player controls Private Investigator Tex Murphy as he recounts the story of his first case to his girlfriend, Chelsee Bando...
(19981998 in video gaming-Events:*Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts 1st Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo to the AIAS Hall of Fame*British Academy of Film and Television Arts hosts the 1st annual BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards...
) - Project Fedora (working title), (TBA)
Tex Murphy universe
The games in the Tex Murphy series take place in a post-apocalyptic 21st century. All of the games take place mostly in a post-WWIIIWorld War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
San Francisco. The skies glow red with radiation
Radiation
In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...
, and people who don't live in a better-sheltered city or lack genetic immunity to the radiation are disfigured and usually repulsive. Several San Francisco landmarks are still present, such as the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
, Coit Tower
Coit Tower
Coit Tower is a tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 at the request of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the city of San Francisco; Coit bequeathed one-third of her estate to the city "to be expended in an...
and Alcatraz, but most of them are completely abandoned; most damaged beyond repair from bombs in WWIII. The futuristic aspect borrows heavily from sci-fi books and films, most notably Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
for its flying cars and impossibly dense tenement
Tenement
A tenement is, in most English-speaking areas, a substandard multi-family dwelling, usually old, occupied by the poor.-History:Originally the term tenement referred to tenancy and therefore to any rented accommodation...
s.
The character
Tex Murphy is a hard-boiled PI. Tex is a member of the portion of the population born without any genetic defects making him a normal human (referred by in-game characters as a "Norm"). He is an avid fan of the classic film noirFilm noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
films of Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
. As such, he does his work in the style of archetypal film noir detectives such as Sam Spade
Sam Spade
Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....
and Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
. He has remarkable skills of observation (always punctuated with humorous internal monologues); when examining objects or features, he hardly ever misses an important or unusual detail. However, he is also occasionally a bit clumsy and naive which gets him into trouble from time to time, as does his sarcastic wit.
He is honest and generally a good-natured fellow who suffers from a bad back, a little too much alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
(Bourbon
Bourbon whiskey
Bourbon is a type of American whiskey – a barrel-aged distilled spirit made primarily from corn. The name of the spirit derives from its historical association with an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky . It has been produced since the 18th century...
...neat, preferred) and a few too many blows to the head. He runs his Private Investigator's business out of his apartment at the Ritz Hotel
Ritz Hotel
The Ritz London is a luxury 5-star hotel located in Piccadilly and overlooking Green Park in London.- History :Swiss hotelier César Ritz, former manager of the Savoy Hotel, opened the hotel on 24 May 1906...
on Chandler Avenue in Old San Francisco "among the mutants and the destitute" where several businesses and friends reside, including his love interest, the mysteriously mutated newspaper stand owner Chelsee Bando. Aside from wishing for a respectable, not to mention high-paying, client all he'd like to do is earn her love and respect if he can just refrain from placing his admittedly not too bad smelling foot in his mouth.
Radio theater
To meet the fans' demand for more Tex Murphy, Chris JonesChris Jones (Access Software)
Christopher Jones is a videogame designer and finance professional. He is most famous for his series of interactive movies starring the hard-boiled, out-of-his-time gumshoe Tex Murphy, played by Jones himself, a private investigator that lives in the San Francisco of the middle of the 21st...
and Aaron Conners released a 6 episode radio theater series in 2001
2001 in video gaming
-Events:* Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts John Carmack of id Software to the AIAS Hall of Fame...
. The radio theater stars several of the original characters and voices from the games, including Jones as Tex Murphy. As of 2006
2006 in video gaming
-Events:* January 26, 2006 -- Nintendo announces its newly redesigned handheld, the Nintendo DS Lite. The new model is lighter, smaller, has configurable brightness and features an improved user interface.* January 26, 2006 -- Konami Corp...
there were no plans to release any new episodes due to the costs. The previous episodes are currently available through The Unofficial Tex Murphy website.
Plans
The last game to be released was in 1998 and the developerVideo game developer
A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...
of the series is no longer in business (Access Software was acquired by Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, who in turn sold the studio to Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is a major American publisher, developer, and distributor of video games and video game peripherals. Take-Two wholly owns 2K Games and Rockstar Games. The company's headquarters are in New York City, with international headquarters in Windsor, United Kingdom...
, who shut it down). For years, the rights to Tex were held by Microsoft and later Take-Two, and efforts to revive the franchise were squashed. As of 2009, series creators Aaron Conners and Chris Jones have re-acquired the rights to past and future Tex games. Conners recently stated "I no longer think Tex's return is an 'if,' but a 'when.'"
Chris, Aaron, and other veterans of the series formed the independent developer Big Finish Games
Big Finish Games
Big Finish Productions is an American independent game developer formed by members of Access Software/Indie Built following the company's close in 2007. The company was founded with the goal of developing story-driven, interactive games...
. The site's main page was updated in April of 2009 with an announcement of "Project Fedora" as a future release. This has led to much speculation amongst the Tex Murphy fanbase that a new project in the form of a game is in the works as the fedora is a signature component of Tex's outfit, especially in light of the fact that this announcement coincided with the news of the rights to the series being secured.
On June 16 2009, Good Old Games re-released the first three games in the series as downloadable titles and put the last two into the "coming soon" section. The fourth game followed on June 30, and the fifth on the 21st of July. Some of the releases use DOSbox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
to maintain compatibility with modern operating systems.