Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum (1991)
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum is a 1991 point-and-click video game made by Access Software and Nightdive Studios.
San Francisco, 2033. Tex Murphy, still behind on rent, picks up a case with an unusual destination: Mars. A billionaire's daughter has gone missing and the trail leads from Earth's underworld to the red planet's colonial settlements. The second Tex Murphy adventure pushed the series into science fiction territory, trading the first game's earthbound thriller for something stranger and more expansive. The same first-person perspective and inventory-based puzzles carry over, but the change in setting opens up new categories of suspect and motive.
Quick answers
What is Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum about?
San Francisco, 2033. Tex Murphy, still behind on rent, picks up a case with an unusual destination: Mars. A billionaire's daughter has gone missing and the trail leads from Earth's underworld to the red planet's colonial settlements. The second Tex Murphy adventure pushed the series into science fiction territory, trading the first game's earthbound thriller for something stranger and more expansive. The same first-person perspective and inventory-based puzzles carry over, but the change in setting opens up new categories of suspect and motive.
When was Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum released?
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum was released on 31 December 1991.
Who made Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum?
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum was made by Access Software and Nightdive Studios.
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Explore Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum guides
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum in our writing
- Companion guide: Access Software: Tex Murphy and the FMV Detective
A few thoughts on Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum
Mars Express is the natural companion: a French animated noir set on a colonized Mars where a private detective uncovers a conspiracy, matching this game's tone almost frame for frame.
Point-and-click mysteries that reward patient puzzle-solving
Martian Memorandum sends Tex from a missing heiress's file straight into a colonial mystery he has to work out one clue and one inventory item at a time. The Rusty Lake trilogy hides its own family mysteries behind the same slow-burn puzzle logic, Quern: Undying Thoughts strands you somewhere isolated with only your wits, and Unforeseen Incidents builds its case from small, examined details.
Sci-fi mysteries that trade the interrogation room for something stranger
Martian Memorandum takes Tex off Earth entirely, chasing a missing heiress across Mars's colonial frontier. Mars Express runs the same beat with an android investigator working a case that keeps mutating, Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor both build futures where solving the case means outthinking the technology involved, and Project Hail Mary strands its lead with a puzzle only patient reasoning can crack.
Cop procedurals chasing a new case every week
Martian Memorandum still runs on the same engine as any good procedural: a client walks in, a body or a disappearance follows, and Tex works the leads until they connect. Law & Order and Special Victims Unit run that same grind week after week, NCIS and The Rookie split the legwork across a full team, and The Mentalist gets there by reading people instead of forensics.
Crime stories told in the first person, one hard verse at a time
Tex Murphy narrates his own investigation the way a good crime record narrates a life: blunt, specific, and unwilling to look away from the ugly parts. Illmatic and All Eyez on Me tell street stories with that same first-person weight, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Get Rich or Die Tryin' turn hard experience into hard verses, and Nebraska tells its stories of desperate people the same plain, unflinching way.