Martian Memorandum

Last updated
Martian Memorandum
MMBoxArtWiki.jpg
Cover art
Developer(s) Access Software
Publisher(s) Access Software
Designer(s) Chris Jones
Brent Erickson
Programmer(s) Brent Erickson
Series Tex Murphy
Platform(s) MS-DOS
Release
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Martian Memorandum is a dystopian cyberpunk/noir graphic adventure game that was originally released in 1991 for MS-DOS. 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 . The game is set in 2039, several years after Mean Streets .

Contents

The game was re-released in 2014 on Steam with support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. [2]

Plot

Tex Murphy is hired by business mogul Marshall Alexander, founder of TerraForm Corporation, to locate his missing daughter, Alexis. As in the first game, Tex travels between destinations and interrogates characters associated with the subject such as Alexander's attorney, his wife, and Alexis's roommate and business partners. Interrogations are menu-based and dialogues open up additional destinations and dialogue options. The investigation reveals to Tex that the girl's disappearance is linked with an item in Alexander's possession.

Alexis has been traced on planet Mars, whose exploitation is mostly owned by Alexander's company. Tex finds out that Alexander was actually Collier Stanton, a scientist and explorer of Mars, infamous for killing mutant colonists to obtain the "Oracle Stone". With this stone, Alexander foresaw the future, read antagonists' minds and built his corporate empire. Alexis's good will was used to lure her into stealing the Stone and bring it to Mars, only to fall into the hands of Thomas Dangerfield, the original discoverer of the Stone.

The character of Larry Hammond, who appeared in Mean Streets, returns to this game, giving information to the player. Lowell Percival, who is introduced here, also appears in Killing Moon, as does Mac Malden, who appears in both Killing Moon and Pandora Directive.

Gameplay

Interrogation scene Martian Memorandum screenshot.png
Interrogation scene

Unlike the more experimental Mean Streets , Martian Memorandum adheres to the genre conventions of the point-and-click adventure game. The gameplay style is based on interrogations, gathering information which "unlocks" new destinations and interrogation options. A verb bar at the bottom of the screen allows players to select different ways to interact with their environment. Certain objects can be collected, placed in an inventory and then used at a later point in time. It also introduced dialog trees to the series. Conversations feature voice and small video clips, elements that were greatly expanded in later games in the series. The game is notable for its increased use of digitized human voices and digital "video" of human actors, playable even through a PC's internal speaker.

Reception

Dragon gave the game 3 out of 5 stars. [3] Computer Gaming World in 1992 praised the audio and digitized animation, and concluded that "Martian Memorandum produces hours of enjoyment [and] provides a tremendous challenge". [4] That year the magazine named it one of the year's top four adventure games. [5]

Sales

As of July 1992, the game had sold approximately 85,000 copies. [6]

Related Research Articles

<i>Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure</i> 1989 video game

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure is a graphic adventure game, released in 1989 by Lucasfilm Games, coinciding with the release of the film of the same name. It was the third game to use the SCUMM engine.

<i>Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis</i> 1992 video game

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by LucasArts and released in June 1992 for Amiga, DOS, and Macintosh. Almost a year later, it was reissued on CD-ROM as an enhanced "talkie" edition with full voice acting and digitized sound effects. The seventh game to use the script language SCUMM, Fate of Atlantis has the player explore environments and interact with objects and characters by using commands constructed with predetermined verbs. It features three unique paths to select, influencing story development, gameplay and puzzles. The game used an updated SCUMM engine and required a 286-based PC, although it still runs as a real-mode DOS application. The CD talkie version required EMS memory enabled to load the voice data.

<i>Space: 1889</i> Steampunk tabletop role-playing game

Space: 1889 is a tabletop role-playing game of Victorian-era space-faring, created by Frank Chadwick and originally published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) from 1989 to 1990. It was the first roleplaying game to feature space colonization using steam technology in the style of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle in what would later be called steampunk. The setting of Space: 1889 has not only produced roleplaying games, but boardgames, books, miniatures and a computer game.

<i>Under a Killing Moon</i> 1994 video game

Under a Killing Moon is a 1994 point-and-click adventure interactive movie video game. It is the third installment in the Tex Murphy series of adventure games produced by Access Software. In it, the detective Tex Murphy finds himself unwittingly involved in the affairs of a dangerous cult.

<i>Tex Murphy</i> Video game series

Tex Murphy is a series of video games designed by Chris Jones. The eponymous main character is portrayed in live-action by Chris Jones himself. He is characterized as a down-on-his-luck private investigator in a post-nuclear future San Francisco, borrowing tropes from both the film noir and cyberpunk genres.

<i>Kings Quest V</i> 1990 video game

King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! is a 1990 graphic adventure game by Sierra On-Line. Originally released in November 1990, it featured a significant improvement in graphics. It was also the first King's Quest installment to replace the typing user interface with a point-and-click user interface. The title is a spoof on the proverb "Absence makes the heart grow fonder".

<i>Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams</i> 1991 video game

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams is a role-playing video game, part of the Ultima series, published in 1991, and re-released for Windows and Mac OS via GOG.com in 2012. It uses the same engine as Ultima VI: The False Prophet, as did Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire.

<i>Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday</i> 1990 video game

Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday is a role-playing video game set in the Buck Rogers XXVC universe. It was published in 1990 by Strategic Simulations for MS-DOS, Commodore 64, and Amiga. A Sega Genesis version was released in 1991. Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed is the 1992 sequel.

<i>The Pandora Directive</i> 1996 video game

The Pandora Directive is the fourth installment in the Tex Murphy series of graphic adventure games produced by Access Software. After its creators reacquired the rights to the series, it was re-released on Good Old Games in July 2009.

<i>Tex Murphy: Overseer</i> 1998 video game

Tex Murphy: Overseer is the fifth installment in the Tex Murphy series of graphic adventure games produced by Access Software. In it, the player controls Private Investigator Tex Murphy as he recounts the story of his first case to his girlfriend, Chelsee Bando. Like the previous two Tex Murphy games, Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive, Overseer combined the use of full motion video (FMV) with 3D environments.

<i>Millennium 2.2</i> 1989 video game

Millennium 2.2 is a resource management computer game by Ian Bird, released in 1989 for Atari ST, Amiga and MS-DOS. The MS-DOS version of the game was released as Millennium: Return to Earth. It is the forerunner to Bird's Deuteros, which is in a similar resource management game but many times larger and more difficult.

Christopher Jones is a video game designer and producer, CEO, finance professional, and actor. He is best known for a series of interactive movies in which he stars as Tex Murphy, a private investigator who lives in San Francisco in the middle of the 21st century.

<i>Space Quest IV</i> 1991 video game

Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers is a 1991 graphic adventure game by Sierra On-Line, and the fourth entry in the Space Quest series. The game was released originally on floppy disks in March 1991, and later released on CD-ROM in December 1992 with full speech support; an Atari ST version was announced via Sierra Online's magazine, Sierra News Magazine, but was later canceled. The game sees players assume the role of Roger Wilco, who is thrust into a new adventure across time and space where he must thwart the plans of an old foe that is seeking revenge against him.

<i>Space Quest III</i> 1989 video game

Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon is a 1989 graphic adventure game by Sierra On-Line, and the third game in the Space Quest series. Players assume the role of Roger Wilco, a lowly space janitor, who becomes involved in rescuing a pair of computer programmers from a sinister video game company. The game received positive reviews from critics, and contributed further to the series' commercial success for Sierra. A sequel, Space Quest IV, was released in 1991.

<i>Chaser</i> (video game) 2003 video game

Chaser is a first-person shooter action video game developed by Cauldron. The game is built on the CloakNT 3D engine. It was re-released on Steam and GOG.com in 2011.

<i>Mean Streets</i> (video game) 1989 video game

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.

<i>Amazon: Guardians of Eden</i> 1992 video game

Amazon: Guardians of Eden is a point-and-click adventure game for MS-DOS published by Access Software in 1992. It is one of the first games with Super VGA graphics, digitized voice-overs, and an online hint system. The game was re-released on GOG.com in July 2021.

<i>Space: 1889</i> (video game) 1990 video game

Space: 1889 is an adventure game developed by Paragon Software and published in 1990 for Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS.

<i>Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure</i> 2014 video game

Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure is the sixth game in the Tex Murphy series of detective adventure games, developed by Big Finish Games and published by Atlus. Like the previous three games, it tells much of its story through live-action full-motion video sequences, and features freely explorable 3D environments during gameplay.

References

  1. ↑ "Bits & PCs". The Press Democrat . September 19, 1991. p. 18. Retrieved April 25, 2024. New Games//Martian Memorandum
  2. ↑ "Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
  3. ↑ Lesser, Hartley; Lesser, Patricia & Lesser, Kirk (January 1992). "The Role of Computers". Dragon (177): 57–66.
  4. ↑ Chaut, Michael (January 1992). "A P.I. on Mars". Computer Gaming World. No. 90. pp. 38, 40. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
  5. ↑ "CGW Salutes The Games of the Year". Computer Gaming World. November 1992. p. 110. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  6. ↑ "It's Not All Fun for Computer-Games Makers". The Salt Lake Tribune . July 12, 1992. p. 74. Retrieved April 25, 2024. "Martian Memorandum", which has sold about 85,000 copies at $59.95 each, allows a player to control a down-on-his-luck detective, hired to find a kidnapped teen-ager on Mars.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.