Never played this on C64, but I was aware of the series from the adverts for Under a Killing Moon I used to see in PC Format in the mid 90's, mainly because it starred Superman actress Margot Kidder. It also had Brian Keith and James Earl Jones doing voice work for it.
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer RIP Darth Vader & Thulsa Doom 😢 James was such a great actor, and another of the old guard who served in the military. James was in the US Rangers in the 50's and went through the survival course, which is why he had no fear of snakes when playing Thulsa Doom 👍👍
I saw the adds of MEAN STREETS for the Commodore 64 and Amiga from many of the finnish 🇫🇮 and english 🇬🇧 computer game magazines back in the early 1990's. I have never played that game before, but it does remind me of NEUROMANCER and BLADE RUNNER 😺👍🕹️. And let's not forget RISE OF THE DRAGON from Dynamix 😺👍🕹️. I even remember playing CRIME WAVE on my friend's old PC back in the early 1990's. MAN, THAT GAME WAS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY 😹!!!
I remember seeing this in the store and thinking they'd put the wrong sticker on it, as I couldn't imagine there being a C64 version. Still, I bought it, and was glad it was indeed what it was labeled. Maybe we have the VIC-II palette to thank for it being ported, as it was rich enough to do 4-color grayscale, which suited the actor portraits just fine. They might've done better to leave out the flight simulator in exchange for less swapping or including a few speech clips, but overall a solid effort.
I think the flying/driving parts should have 100% been cut from the C64 version as they just 'didn't work' in my opinin, with them being incredibly sluggish. The rest of the game is superb though 😇🕹️👌
I am obsessed with the Tex Murphy series. It absolutely blew my mind when I got Under a Killing Moon. I've been following Paul Stetler's channel "Conversations with Curtis", the main actor in Phantasmagoria 2, and he's been collaborating with my favorite reviewer/game rage/entertainer of all time, Noah Antwiler/TheSpoonyExperiment. They've played both UAKM and Tesla Effect, it's glorious ^^ (also so happy seeing Noah so much better mentally)
Haha Phantasmagoria! I remember getting that game for my PC... the guy in the store said it was a horror game. It was more like a comedy, but good fun. Ended up really loving it 😇🕹️👌
There was indeed something about that box art that had caught my eye. Now, life for a Commodore gamer over here in the United States was a bit different then how I've been hearing about in other countries. Our typical software supplies were available over in the malls from corporate companies and mega stores that covered a lot of categories. That's not where I found this game at. Because there was a local Commodore "authorized" dealer... AKA a dedicated fan who sold, repaired and stocked EVERYTHING Commodore and Amiga based and would have nothing to do with any other platform. Ran it out of a building that the city would eventually win the battle on about being condemned and kept that place going long past the days when the machines were considered old. And I am glad that I had seen it, too. It was the perfect time when life wasn't so fast paced, and I had time to properly get into this deep story plot. I loved everything about it, once I had learned it. Loading times were just a part of the game. So, I never minded that at all. Granted, I never beat this in a day, either. Maybe a week. And it just felt like it should have been pushing the machine a bit too hard for all that it was trying to do. These days, if I were to ever revisit this game... emulation with all the wait time removed feels like it should be a must. As the original feels more like that Three Stooges game. Pushed so far that the required load times take beyond forever. And on that one, there is an NES port. So, I feel confident in stating that 10+ NES gaming sessions can fit inside one C-64 gaming session... even if the NES one is actually the stripped-down version.
Emulation saves a lot of headaches, especially with the loading times... thats for sure! It also makes superb games like this much more accessible, but I agree with what you said briefly there - that when life wasn't so fast paced we could get deep into games such as this 😇🕹️👌
I never played "Mean Streets", but I did play "Martian Memorandum", the next in the series, on our family's 386 PC. Access was ahead of its time when it came to using digitized images (and later, video), and there was certainly a "wow, this feels very flashy and cutting edge" factor. But there was a lot of frustration to those games, especially the earlier ones; a lot of unnecessary repetition.
Years ago I played Marian Memorandum and Under a Killing Moon... but I haven't played Mean Streets! I've been meaning to give this one a go... but haven't decided if I want to play the C64, Amiga, or PC version (which I have on GOG). I know what you mean about the disk swapping/loading nightmare! One of the worst offenders was probably Ultima V (which was also one of my favorite games at the time). It was on 4 disks that were used front and back! I was fortunate at the time to have a C128... but I went to a friend's house who played on his C64 and it was a nightmare having to wait for loading after almost every action! And there was no music! That's crazy! I don't know how he had the patience to play! LOL
Loading times were crazy for some games weren't they! Gah, I have no idea where we all got the patience from back in the day... but somehow, we persevered and waited very patiently! I'm glad we did... a lot of the loading screens from the cassette games were excellent though and used to get me really excited to play the game (Until it crashed mid-load!!) 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yup. I remember some loading screens for disk as well... and there were also some really cool hacker intros. That said, I think we had the patience because it was our only option! We wanted to play good games... and the only way to do that was to wait.
I LOVE this game. I got a copy from my Aunt on DOS and played it nonstop. The first one definitely has some "rougher" spots, but still hold up quite well I think. Nice to see the C64 version looks pretty good.
Superb game isn't it... the C64 version unfortunately suffered with loading times and slowdown on the driving/flying parts... but back in the day, I just overlooked this 😇🕹️👌
I've just never cared for most adventure games, be they pure text or hybrid like this. The only one I genuinely loved was Neuromancer, both because I was a giant William Gibson nerd in my early teens and because the game both utilized the world of the Sprawl novels very well and much of the gameplay was done through a pseudo-BBS interface with well predicted responses until you managed upgrade your cyberdeck enough to jack into actual Cyberspace where the REAL fun began. Mean streets just didn't come close. Still a good pick for the channel tho!
can't believe they made this work on the c64! i played this game on pc, and looking at your video footage, they did a really impressive job, just too bad the floppies couldn't hold more data to eliminate the excessive disk swapping, otherwise this might have been one hell of a game for the c64.
Very ambitious game to convert to the C64! When I saw the title I confused this with that awful Titus beat 'em up, where you walk the streets with your gun and (t)rusty pet panther... You know: Wild Streets!
Good lord I remember that game... I had so many high hopes loading that one up, thinking the graphics looked like superb pixel art style sprites. Bleughh, how wrong was I - the game is dookie 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yes, the box art made it look like the coolest beat 'em up possibly ever and the 16 bit screenshots looked very nice... but it's bad on all systems apparently. Titus: so hit and miss!
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yeah it was so good. Deserved more attention than it got. I guess it kinda got the short stick being released at the eve of 3D action games and RTS taking over, when media declared adventure games dead.
I wish it worked like that, alas... there was no difference I'm afraid. Apparently there is as EasyFlash relase on csdb website which eradicates the need for long load times however 😇🕹️👌
Please check CSDB, there is Easyflash version. No disk swapping anymore, and no mad loading times. No need to juggle with d64 files in an emulator as well. CRT file is 800+ K, and I haven't tried it yet. Hope it's not buggy.
Whoa! While I’ve long been aware of the series, I never before realized the first Tex Murphy game was even on the Commodore 64! Normally when I hear of this game, it’s about people praising their efforts to get voice recordings to play over an early Dos-PC’s internal beeper. By the way, did the Commodore 64 version maintain having all those voice samples?
No voice samplings I'm afraid - I noticed that they have a 'Real Sound' logo on the disk label for Mean Streets... but there is no digitised speech or sounds in the C64 version of the game. Maybe they were planning on it, but then cut it - or maybe putting the logo on the label was an oversight or mistake? 😇🕹️👌
Never played it. If the game would have been more responsive and the loading times shorter it could have been quite interesting. A classic perhaps? But.. A bit to much for our trusty c64 to chew, eh?
It certainly plays much better using the EasyFlash download (found on csdb website) but back in the day it was horrendous for loading! Mind you, we were much more patient back then 😇🕹️👌
Great review man! Look at those graphics, wow! I will play this for sure now that I've seen it, on original hardware ofc. I hope they have a good fastloader baked in for my sake lol
Haha yeah I had to 'warp' the emulator at the loading parts as sometimes they can take some time indeed. Also the 'flying' parts in the car are slow going... but it's worth it as the game itself is really immersive 😇🕹👌
Looked great for it's time thats for sure... I was very proud to own this as a kid and show it off to my mates who were equally blown away by the capabilities of the humble Commodore 64 😇🕹️👌
We'll get there, text adventures are a little different as they require lots of game time but I'll definitely get it played someday - maybe even a livestream! 😇🕹️👌
I actually had this one on the Amiga and I do remember enjoying it at the time. They did a great job graphically on the little C64.
It always amazes me how good some of the C64 games actually were... a technological marvel for 64k 😇🕹️👌
Never played this on C64, but I was aware of the series from the adverts for Under a Killing Moon I used to see in PC Format in the mid 90's, mainly because it starred Superman actress Margot Kidder. It also had Brian Keith and James Earl Jones doing voice work for it.
Not just voice work - the did full FMV acting in it.
So strange you mention hi, and he died today... sad times 😢🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer RIP Darth Vader & Thulsa Doom 😢 James was such a great actor, and another of the old guard who served in the military. James was in the US Rangers in the 50's and went through the survival course, which is why he had no fear of snakes when playing Thulsa Doom 👍👍
I saw the adds of MEAN STREETS for
the Commodore 64 and Amiga from
many of the finnish 🇫🇮 and english 🇬🇧
computer game magazines back in the early 1990's.
I have never played that game before,
but it does remind me of NEUROMANCER and BLADE RUNNER 😺👍🕹️.
And let's not forget RISE OF THE DRAGON from Dynamix 😺👍🕹️.
I even remember playing CRIME WAVE
on my friend's old PC back in the early 1990's.
MAN, THAT GAME WAS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY 😹!!!
Neuromancer is epic
It definitely has that sort of cyberpunk vibe to it 😇🕹️👌
I remember seeing this in the store and thinking they'd put the wrong sticker on it, as I couldn't imagine there being a C64 version. Still, I bought it, and was glad it was indeed what it was labeled. Maybe we have the VIC-II palette to thank for it being ported, as it was rich enough to do 4-color grayscale, which suited the actor portraits just fine. They might've done better to leave out the flight simulator in exchange for less swapping or including a few speech clips, but overall a solid effort.
I think the flying/driving parts should have 100% been cut from the C64 version as they just 'didn't work' in my opinin, with them being incredibly sluggish. The rest of the game is superb though 😇🕹️👌
I am obsessed with the Tex Murphy series. It absolutely blew my mind when I got Under a Killing Moon. I've been following Paul Stetler's channel "Conversations with Curtis", the main actor in Phantasmagoria 2, and he's been collaborating with my favorite reviewer/game rage/entertainer of all time, Noah Antwiler/TheSpoonyExperiment. They've played both UAKM and Tesla Effect, it's glorious ^^ (also so happy seeing Noah so much better mentally)
Haha Phantasmagoria! I remember getting that game for my PC... the guy in the store said it was a horror game. It was more like a comedy, but good fun. Ended up really loving it 😇🕹️👌
There was indeed something about that box art that had caught my eye. Now, life for a Commodore gamer over here in the United States was a bit different then how I've been hearing about in other countries. Our typical software supplies were available over in the malls from corporate companies and mega stores that covered a lot of categories. That's not where I found this game at. Because there was a local Commodore "authorized" dealer... AKA a dedicated fan who sold, repaired and stocked EVERYTHING Commodore and Amiga based and would have nothing to do with any other platform. Ran it out of a building that the city would eventually win the battle on about being condemned and kept that place going long past the days when the machines were considered old.
And I am glad that I had seen it, too. It was the perfect time when life wasn't so fast paced, and I had time to properly get into this deep story plot. I loved everything about it, once I had learned it. Loading times were just a part of the game. So, I never minded that at all. Granted, I never beat this in a day, either. Maybe a week. And it just felt like it should have been pushing the machine a bit too hard for all that it was trying to do.
These days, if I were to ever revisit this game... emulation with all the wait time removed feels like it should be a must. As the original feels more like that Three Stooges game. Pushed so far that the required load times take beyond forever. And on that one, there is an NES port. So, I feel confident in stating that 10+ NES gaming sessions can fit inside one C-64 gaming session... even if the NES one is actually the stripped-down version.
Emulation saves a lot of headaches, especially with the loading times... thats for sure! It also makes superb games like this much more accessible, but I agree with what you said briefly there - that when life wasn't so fast paced we could get deep into games such as this 😇🕹️👌
I never played "Mean Streets", but I did play "Martian Memorandum", the next in the series, on our family's 386 PC. Access was ahead of its time when it came to using digitized images (and later, video), and there was certainly a "wow, this feels very flashy and cutting edge" factor. But there was a lot of frustration to those games, especially the earlier ones; a lot of unnecessary repetition.
Games with FMV were a nice touch! My favourite to intoduce this was when I played Myst! I was mindblown 😇🕹️👌
Loved this game on the Atari ST. Was amazed they back ported it to the C64
Yup, the C64 helf up pretty well too... apart from a little bit of slowdown for the flying/driving parts. Still, very playable 😇🕹️👌
Years ago I played Marian Memorandum and Under a Killing Moon... but I haven't played Mean Streets! I've been meaning to give this one a go... but haven't decided if I want to play the C64, Amiga, or PC version (which I have on GOG).
I know what you mean about the disk swapping/loading nightmare! One of the worst offenders was probably Ultima V (which was also one of my favorite games at the time). It was on 4 disks that were used front and back! I was fortunate at the time to have a C128... but I went to a friend's house who played on his C64 and it was a nightmare having to wait for loading after almost every action! And there was no music! That's crazy! I don't know how he had the patience to play! LOL
Loading times were crazy for some games weren't they! Gah, I have no idea where we all got the patience from back in the day... but somehow, we persevered and waited very patiently! I'm glad we did... a lot of the loading screens from the cassette games were excellent though and used to get me really excited to play the game (Until it crashed mid-load!!) 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yup. I remember some loading screens for disk as well... and there were also some really cool hacker intros. That said, I think we had the patience because it was our only option! We wanted to play good games... and the only way to do that was to wait.
I LOVE this game. I got a copy from my Aunt on DOS and played it nonstop. The first one definitely has some "rougher" spots, but still hold up quite well I think. Nice to see the C64 version looks pretty good.
Superb game isn't it... the C64 version unfortunately suffered with loading times and slowdown on the driving/flying parts... but back in the day, I just overlooked this 😇🕹️👌
I've just never cared for most adventure games, be they pure text or hybrid like this. The only one I genuinely loved was Neuromancer, both because I was a giant William Gibson nerd in my early teens and because the game both utilized the world of the Sprawl novels very well and much of the gameplay was done through a pseudo-BBS interface with well predicted responses until you managed upgrade your cyberdeck enough to jack into actual Cyberspace where the REAL fun began. Mean streets just didn't come close. Still a good pick for the channel tho!
Neuromancer is superb too isn't it... been trying to get around to playing that at some stage 😇🕹️👌
I didn't realise this had a C64 version... That's really cool!
Yeah! Was a superb game for those who had the patience to stick with it, as it does get pretty immersive 😇🕹️👌
can't believe they made this work on the c64! i played this game on pc, and looking at your video footage, they did a really impressive job, just too bad the floppies couldn't hold more data to eliminate the excessive disk swapping, otherwise this might have been one hell of a game for the c64.
Definitely a mighty job to get this one running for the Commodore 64 and it's a superb game (apart from the disk swapping) 😇🕹️👌
Very ambitious game to convert to the C64! When I saw the title I confused this with that awful Titus beat 'em up, where you walk the streets with your gun and (t)rusty pet panther...
You know: Wild Streets!
Good lord I remember that game... I had so many high hopes loading that one up, thinking the graphics looked like superb pixel art style sprites. Bleughh, how wrong was I - the game is dookie 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yes, the box art made it look like the coolest beat 'em up possibly ever and the 16 bit screenshots looked very nice... but it's bad on all systems apparently. Titus: so hit and miss!
Only ever played Tex Murphy Pandora Directive, and that was on PC ages later
Pandora Detective was a good game too, I remember that one for my PC also 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yeah it was so good. Deserved more attention than it got. I guess it kinda got the short stick being released at the eve of 3D action games and RTS taking over, when media declared adventure games dead.
This looks amazing on the C64! I wonder if there was less disk swapping with a C128. Or maybe it didn't use the extra ram?
I wish it worked like that, alas... there was no difference I'm afraid. Apparently there is as EasyFlash relase on csdb website which eradicates the need for long load times however 😇🕹️👌
I have heard about this but never see it before, I was a huge fan of later Tex Murphy games
Get it fired up and give it a whirl 😇🕹️👌
Please check CSDB, there is Easyflash version. No disk swapping anymore, and no mad loading times. No need to juggle with d64 files in an emulator as well.
CRT file is 800+ K, and I haven't tried it yet. Hope it's not buggy.
Yes! Seems exactly what it needs!
Absolutely, slow as heck for loading otherwise 😇🕹️👌
Fantastic, thank god for the easyflash conversions! 😇🕹️👌
Whoa! While I’ve long been aware of the series, I never before realized the first Tex Murphy game was even on the Commodore 64! Normally when I hear of this game, it’s about people praising their efforts to get voice recordings to play over an early Dos-PC’s internal beeper. By the way, did the Commodore 64 version maintain having all those voice samples?
No voice samplings I'm afraid - I noticed that they have a 'Real Sound' logo on the disk label for Mean Streets... but there is no digitised speech or sounds in the C64 version of the game. Maybe they were planning on it, but then cut it - or maybe putting the logo on the label was an oversight or mistake? 😇🕹️👌
Well looks like they at least got all that poop cleaned up by 2033.
Hopefully we're all still here in 9 years and we can revisit this comment to confirm haha 😇🕹️👌
Never played it. If the game would have been more responsive and the loading times shorter it could have been quite interesting. A classic perhaps? But.. A bit to much for our trusty c64 to chew, eh?
It certainly plays much better using the EasyFlash download (found on csdb website) but back in the day it was horrendous for loading! Mind you, we were much more patient back then 😇🕹️👌
Great review man! Look at those graphics, wow! I will play this for sure now that I've seen it, on original hardware ofc. I hope they have a good fastloader baked in for my sake lol
Haha yeah I had to 'warp' the emulator at the loading parts as sometimes they can take some time indeed. Also the 'flying' parts in the car are slow going... but it's worth it as the game itself is really immersive 😇🕹👌
There is Easyflash version on CSDB.
I thought this was quite clever for a c64 game. Game set in 2033, it's not far off!
Wouldnt surprise me if Elon Musk creates a flying car by 2033 😇🕹️👌
I think this game merits a remake
Check out Steam for the PC version... that's probably as good as it gets 😇🕹️👌
Pretty graphics.
Looked great for it's time thats for sure... I was very proud to own this as a kid and show it off to my mates who were equally blown away by the capabilities of the humble Commodore 64 😇🕹️👌
Do a video on The Big Sleaze detective text adventure game please.
We'll get there, text adventures are a little different as they require lots of game time but I'll definitely get it played someday - maybe even a livestream! 😇🕹️👌