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EssentialsTex Murphy fans a-GOG at series re-release
Many longtime adventure gamers have a special place in their hearts for Tex Murphy, the affable private detective in Access Software's acclaimed series. Newer adventure fans wonder what all the excitement is about, mainly because the five Tex Murphy games are just too hard to find or get running these days. Today, the good news for all concerned is that the series is now being offered on GOG.com, a DRM-free download portal that specializes in XP and Vista-compatible older games.
For the time being, it's the first three games that are available for purchase. In one bundle for only $5.99 comes Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum, the two third-person games produced before the significant series switch to first-person FMV format for the final three titles. One of those is also being offered, as Under a Killing Moon can be purchased from GOG as well for a cost of $9.99. The remaining two games, The Pandora Directive and Overseer, are expected to be added shortly, with release targets simply listed as "soon".
For the uninitiated, Tex Murphy is a lovable but down-on-his-luck PI, highly reminscent of 1940s noir protagonists, but living in a futuristic, post-WWIII San Francisco. Always in need of a new case, Tex continually finds himself drawn unwittingly into far more than he's bargained for. Designed by Chris Jones (who plays Tex in the FMV titles) and Aaron Conners, who recently returned to the genre with the casual title 3 Cards to Midnight, the games are renowned for their rich character portrayals, complex storylines, and progressive design that many of today's releases are only starting to implement, with such features are difficulty settings, hint options, and branching plot paths.
You may have some luck finding used copies of the later Tex Murphy games on eBay, but this will be the first opportunity for many to play the first two games, and GOG's compatibility updates should help ensure they run smoothly even on newer computers. Along with LucasArts' upcoming re-release of Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, this is a good time for vintage games, it seems. They may not make 'em like they used to, but re-releasing the best ones they used to make isn't such a bad alternative.
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon
Platform(s): Mac, PC, Linux
Tex Murphy: Mean Streets
Platform(s): Mac, PC, Linux
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum
Platform(s): Mac, PC, Linux
Really great news, especially considering the price of the first two games elsewhere. For a while I thought I would have to settle for only playing the latter FMV titles, now I can experience the series in the proper order.
Yes! I already own all the Tex Murphy games, but they are very difficult to run on Vista. I might have to purchase these just for the convenience factor. Pandora Directive is by far the best; it’s one of my favourite games of all time.
This is by far the greatest news for the AG community 
And will become a huge success for GOG.com I’m sure.
Fans from all over will be falling over each to grab these games!
Awesome. I’ve never played any of the Tex Murphy games so this is ideal.
I own all three games, and I can play UAKM and Pandora through DOSBox, so I won’t bother buying those, but I may spend the money on Overseer since I can’t get it running in Vista.
I already own the last three Tex Murphy games. Does this new re-release in any way help me be able to get them up and running in XP and Vista more easily? Or should I just make this purchase?
im not sure i understand what you mean by “rerelease helping you get them up and running”. all this rerelease will do for you is that you download a file, install, and just play. rather than tinkering with some dosbox configuration etc.
Not having to tinker with dosbox is a big plus for a lot of people - but the best part is, that the constant disc swapping will also be gone 
As for Overseer - now that was game that pulled tons of grey hair off people.
Especially the DVD version - thankfully it seems the good folks over at GOG are trying to get that version to work.
Great news and I’m becoming more and more fond of GOG. No DRM and very good work at making life easy for people who want to play the old classics. And even though these games, apart from Overseer, are pretty easy to run in DosBox, the fact that the games have been packed into one installation file instead of the original’s multiple CDs makes the games worth buying for me, although I already have the original releases of all games. And GOG semms like a business worth supporting.
But surely the Overseer version is the CD release? 2,4 GB should equal the four CDs. My DVD-version contains 4,3 GB of Mpeg2 encoded Tex.
I just read over at the GOG forum, that they are actually trying to get the DVD version to work.
The problem seem to be it needs the DVD Express player installed to play nicely - and to find out who owns the rights is a nightmare
