Under a Killing Moon

About Under a Killing Moon

Under a Killing Moon (1994) is Access Software's third Tex Murphy adventure, a four-CD noir interactive movie set in post-nuclear San Francisco that combined FMV with a fully explorable first-person 3D world.

Under a Killing Moon in Depth

In December 2042, after World War III, New San Francisco has been rebuilt while parts of Old San Francisco remain as they were. The war has split society into "Norms", naturally resistant to radiation, and Mutants, who are mostly forced into run-down districts. Tex Murphy, a Norm whose friends are all Mutants, lives on Chandler Avenue in the old city and has hit rock bottom: recently divorced from Sylvia, out of work and low on money. Solving a burglary at the pawnshop across the street seems to turn his luck, and a mysterious Countess Renier then hires him to find a missing statuette for more money than he has ever seen, until he uncovers a doomsday plot by a deadly cult called the Brotherhood of Purity.

It shifted the series to fully interactive 3D, letting players control Tex in first person with complete freedom of movement and search every nook and cranny for clues. Rather than ray casting like Doom, it used true texture-mapped polygons, allowing players to look in all directions and duck, at resolutions up to 640x480. It was also the first Tex Murphy game to show only descriptions of dialogue choices rather than Tex's exact words.

Making Under a Killing Moon

Access Software produced Under a Killing Moon as one of the largest games of its era, combining full-motion video cut-scenes with an advanced 3D world, which was very unusual for an adventure when first-person 3D was associated with shooters like Doom. It was released on 31 October 1994 for MS-DOS and Mac, and PC Data named it the fifth best-selling US computer game of November; by the time of The Pandora Directive in 1996 it had sold 400,000 copies, and Access said it had "broken all Access Software sales records". It received universally positive reviews for its technology and cinematic presentation, winning the Codie award for best fantasy role-playing or adventure program of 1994, though Entertainment Weekly found its storytelling flat. Computer Gaming World ranked it 99th among the best computer games in 1996, IGN later called it "a landmark for adventure games" and one of the best detective games ever, and Adventure Gamers ranked it 25th in 2011. Its creators reacquired the rights and re-released it on Good Old Games in 2009.