Reminiscing….and of course...Tex!

Heya all!

So, this may end up being a little bit long, but I hope you all enjoy it.

My first console was a SEGA Master System, one of the big ones with the card slot. I had a couple of games, the standard ones, Sonic, Alex Kidd, Choplifter. My uncle had a Mega Drive (yep, I'm from the UK, so Genesis for America) and I played a fair bit of that.

I was never really very good at them though. I rarely was able to get past the 2nd level in most games. I couldn't work out what I had to do or would get confused by the controls, or maybe it was just where I was young (I must have been 6-9).

As life is life, things change and we move to a new home as lodgers. Coral and Tim (our family friends and landlords) didn't have a TV. They never really had the time and radio was always their TV.

Then I got a PC. It was a 386 (I think) I think there were a couple of demo disks, that were on floppies. I played some jazz jackrabbit but it was just still...the same thing.

I was still fascinated by games. I started reading pc gamer and trying to get demos to run with no idea what I was really doing.

After a while I had managed to work out how to get the pc speaker to simulate voices in games, even though it sounded awful.

Then I was given a creative bundle. A sound blaster 16 soundcard and a CD-ROM!! After a couple of days I had it up and running. I think full throttle was the first game I played on it….that opened my eyes.

I soaked in every morsel of these "adventure games" I was able to play them, understand them. They had stories that had voices. They had emotion, they had jokes and they had amazing graphics.

One day I got a demo disk. The pandora directive. I'd play it again and again and again. Every game shop I checked for it. I never found it.

Then my dad took me to LA to do the theme parks. I managed to get him to take me to a games shop. At this massive EB store (huge compared to the game shops in Surrey) I finally found it!!! Not only pandora but UAKM too!!! In a bundle!!! I talked my dad into getting it.

I played them and played them and played them again. I absolutely loved them.

I followed every step of overseer. I even ordered it direct from access and had the DVD drive and everything.

Overseer to me then was glorious (so was wing commander 4 the game bundled with the DVD drive). Proper film quality footage, graphics that were amazing compared to other adventure games like grim Fandango to my teenage mind.

I got all caught up in chance, polarity and trance. Then Microsoft happened…

Over the next decade and half, having a PC becomes less cost efficient and I move to consoles with the PS2 and others consoles. The way games had changed had bought these stories to the consoles and I was in my element.

I still occasionally played UAKM and Pandora by plugging my laptop into the TV, but it gave me the sort of stories and atmosphere that I loved.

I followed project fedora but never had the cash to support it, the second it was released I purchased it, but, my PC wasn't up to the task. It was laggy and I couldn't get it to run smoothly at all.

Fast forward to 2019. I decide to play a bit of Tex again. I have an Nvidia shield for my TVs and was able to get dosbox running.

With a little bit of fiddling with filters Tex looked sublime on the big TV. I tried some soundfonts (settled on titanic) and the music sounded fantastic.

I went and got the demos. I played the UAKM demo then moved onto the game, and did the same with Pandora. It was fantastic. I then was able to get overseer running flawlessly on my pc and played through that.

I tried Tesla and after getting a better laptop, I'm playing it on the best graphics settings and it is the best thing I've played in years. Everyone at BFG and of course here have done an amazing job. It really is great to have Tex back and although I'm on day 3 as I write this, I'm tempted to say that is possibly the best Tex so far.

Now I'm so excited for the poisoned pawn and even more Tex. I so hope it comes this year.

So thank you all for keeping Tex alive over the years.
I stream from my pc with the shield but I dont play the old tex games as my tv is 75 inches. I play on my surface as it a smaller screen. I doubt poisioned pawn will be finished this year as it being done by a small team in their spare time and it's a bigger game that was originally planned.
when it's finished we will have opportunity of playing the poisoned pawn and also the original overseer in a modern polished state.
Lynne
tex murphy is back in town