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Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies

214 points by johnshades 8y ago

simonswords82 8y ago
Myst was the first really immersive game I remember playing and thinking "I feel like I'm actually a part of this world". I was a bit too young to really grasp how to play it but that didn't stop me clicking around just exploring because the game (for its time) was just so beautiful and engaging despite the graphical limitations at the time. For those looking for a Myst nostalgia trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtO4E3cIn0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtO4E3cIn0w
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  I didn't care about Myst at all. I don't get what the big deal is, never did.
  - drb91 8y ago
    1) the visuals were excellent, and still hold up against contemporary games. 2) the narrative was high quality. 3) the puzzles were very satisfying to solve. Aside from that, it’s just taste, my friend.
    - poisonarena 8y ago
      Also.. the soundstrack was amazing (and CD Quality!!), really added to the ambience of the levels.. Myst Soundtrack - 15 Above Stoneship (Telescope Theme) https://youtu.be/MTruv9DbnrE https://youtu.be/MTruv9DbnrE
  - Z-Widwil 8y ago
    Did you play it around the years that it first released, or in later years? I didn't play it until the Windows release, but even then, it was vastly different from many games available at that time. The graphics were very obviously ahead of most games. While many games do so now (and some over do it), Myst provided a very cinematic experience. Most of all though was the immersion. Many games had addicting gameplay, but few tried to captivate the player in the same way Myst did. It is of course a point of preference, but it did a lot to draw in the player. Not all of the clues were known to be clues at the time. You could discover something and not know what it did until later on. Then it became a point of realization. You weren't playing the role of a super soldier or simulating someone else. You as the player were the one discovering pieces of this world and helping it unfold. This was extremely captivating. Even to those of a young age who didn't entirely get it. It just provided a different experience from most games at the time. An experience that has been emulated through different means like flash games, but hasn't been recreated in a meaningful way.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Neither did I, to the degree I never played it. I thought of it as pseudo computer game for people that didn't know how much better it could be, even though I had a friend or two that played computer games that really liked Myst and it's sequel. It's pretty plain looking back that in my case it was just arrogance on my part, since I never even played them. I just couldn't imagine then how it could compare to Space Quest, King's Quest, Alone in the Dark, etc. Now I can imagine a few ways in which they might have been able to leverage the format and limitations to expand the world and puzzles in different ways that weren't feasible for other games.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  It's funny looking at it now, because in my head it was basically photo-realistic! For the era it was such a mind-blowing game, and that's really saying something considering it's the same year that gave us NBA Jam, Virtua Fighter, Ridge Racer, Star Fox, X-Wing, Link's Awakening, Doom, and Mega Man X (what a year!).
  - poisonarena 8y ago
    I think the pog craze, mtv liquid television/beavis and butthead was the same year as well..
annadane 8y ago
Riven was absolutely captivating for its time. It still looks gorgeous today. They did an absolutely incredible job.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  The visual quality of Riven is stunning. Making of doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 My article on riven graphics vs the latest in the myst series. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-offline-vs-realtime.html http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-of...
  - mercer 8y ago
    Nice article! Putting the more technical aspects aside, I found the games after Riven to be lacking something, and I only discovered afterwards (maybe even only after the second post-Riven game) that it wasn't by the original studio/team/brothers. Uru, despite its many problems, seemed to recapture some of that magic. But I'll always wonder if that's actually true, or just because I knew the original team (or at least one of the brothers?) was involved again. (Not that the Riven sequels were bad! I quite enjoyed Myst 3)
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Riven was also a huge improvement in worldbuilding. The world of Myst was often rather contrived; the places it depicted didn't always seem particularly "lived in", and the puzzles were often rather contrived in nature -- in many cases, their motivation was simply that the world itself was created as a puzzle. The rocket ship piano puzzle falls squarely into this category, for instance! Riven, on the other hand, depicted a much more natural-seeming world, and its puzzles fit much more organically into that world. For instance, one early puzzle involves learning the Rivenese number system from a child's toy. Some of the Moiety puzzles seem a little artificial, but even those do have some in-game motivation (as part of a security system).
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
dabernathy89 8y ago
An aside, but I'd love to have Myst, Riven, and the other sequels available on the Switch.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Apparently Myst was released for the 3DS in 2012. Not sure about any sequels.
- Z-Widwil 8y ago
  If you need a portable version, it is available on iOS (and realMyst is available on Android) and a demo is available for both. It is also available on DS and PSP but I wouldn't recommend those version as much. I've played the iOS version and touch controls offer a good recreation of the original. Though I would recommend it for replaying the game, not playing it the first time. Some of the immersion is lost on playing a device that can provide other distractions. For me, playing through while sitting down at a screen with a notebook next to you for tracking things you find, is the best way to play for the first time.
apercu 8y ago
I sort of got sidetracked in the article when I read this: "As we collaborated over puzzles played out on vintage machinery, my older daughter said, “People back then must have been incredibly creative to make something like this." I don't know any 6 or 8 year olds that talk like that.
- drb91 8y ago
  Maybe it’s paraphrased? The sentiment seems to make sense to me. Either way, I enjoyed the post.
- jfrankamp 8y ago
  Not saying you're wrong, its anecdotal on both our parts. But I do! If you say to a kid "They built all of this by hand on pen and paper from ideas in their head! (amazed expression)" they'll parrot back to you the above sentence if they catch the meaning and context. My 3 year old does this already, although she'll say "fantastic" instead of "incredible".
  - Loughla 8y ago
    I would agree with this. My observations after having children, is that they do exactly what they see until they understand what they see and make it their own. For example - my youngest recently had an abscessed tooth removed. He is 5 this year. The dental surgeon was astounded that he used the words nitrous-oxide and Novocain. The surgeon said things like giggle gas and sleepy juice, and the five year old dead pan corrected him. Kids will say what they hear - outside of a disability/difference of that kind. If they hear short baby talk, they say short baby talk. If they hear larger words, in context, often, then they'll use those.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Reminds me of those "How will I explain the results of the 2016 election to my 5 year old!!!" ... they don't care. At all.
- sbjustin 8y ago
  My 3 year old daughter told me that I was a "fabulous dad" the other day. Neither my wife or I use that word. It's amazing what kids can say and think.
NickBusey 8y ago
I can't wait for the inevitable Myst VR remake.
- abakker 8y ago
  I've said to several of my friends that this would be the killer VR game for me. Just give me a giant world to explore!
  - reidrac 8y ago
    You may find this interview interesting then: https://theretrohour.com/the-making-of-myst-and-riven-with-robyn-miller-the-retro-hour-ep60/ https://theretrohour.com/the-making-of-myst-and-riven-with-r... (I won't spoil you if there will be or not a Myst VR, go and listen to it)
  - weaksauce 8y ago
    if you haven't played it obduction is also in VR and is also made by cyan. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it's definitely harder than myst was.
    - giobox 8y ago
      Yep, this basically is the VR Myst, no need to hold off. It’s of course compromised in all the usual ways 2018 VR typically is, but if you want a Myst style adventure in an expensive, low res vomit inducing uncomfortable headset, have at it! (I say this as a very disgruntled Oculus Rift + Touch owner...)
      - jamiek88 8y ago
        Kind of fitting that Myst was at the edge of technological capability back then, stretching cdrom tech. Now we are at the ‘barely able to do it cheaply’ stage for VR bringing it back to that medium or Cyan doing something in VR like the old days we need imagination from the players too, letting imperfections slide as long as the story is there.
      - 8y ago
wycy 8y ago
I don't know if I was just too young at the time, but I had Myst/Riven as a kid and never even began to understand what the objective was or what I was supposed to do. Aside from a little bit of walking back and forth, I don't think I accomplished a single thing in game. Given the article references 6 and 8 year olds playing, maybe I was just a dumb kid.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  Nah, I think you were just too young. Sure there were outliers, but it was targeted at an older gaming crowd.
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
    We played it as a family; one of us would take notes, another would be 'at the controls', and the rest would be observing and helping solve the puzzles. Social gaming back before everyone had their own pocket-sized computer :-)
    - jfk13 8y ago
      Yes - this was a large part of the delight! My kids and I spent many enjoyable hours together with the Myst games.
- lgeorget 8y ago
  Or just not patient enough? Note that the kids from the article were guided by their parent in the game. My experience is not very different from yours. I remember going back and forth on the first island and playing with the different puzzles. I was just minding my own business in the game and imagining my own story without taking any interest in the game scenario.
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    The world was more boring then. Myst might have been the only interesting game you had for a month or more.
gdubs 8y ago
I vividly recall playing Myst, headphones on, snow falling outside, in a time before cellphones and (for our family) high speed internet. Cliche as it is, I felt transported. At times I felt spooked. I also remember getting a hold of every magazine I could that went into the making of Myst, transfixed by the creators’ sketches and drawings. Few cultural artifacts — not limited to games — have had as lasting an impact as those days playing Myst in my bedroom in the mid 90s.
- giobox 8y ago
  For me, this is where memories of Myst are best left. At the time I loved it, but in the early 90s one was willing to forgive a game a great many short-comings in sympathy to the state of modern games technology. Myst was very much “state of the art of the possible at the time”. I’d argue that much of the appeal of 90s Myst for some was that such a world could be made at all, let alone be a reasonably competent adventure game to boot. It was also one of the first to give us an excuse to do something cool with our fancy new CD-ROM drives. Timing was critical too for Myst too I think; it came at the point when many ‘ordinary’ (for want of a better word) families were buying their first home PCs. My experience was that Myst and Riven found fans among people not traditionally PC gamers, often via word of mouth that this was something interesting one could do on their relatively expensive new fangled PC investment. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think it holds up all that well as a ‘game’ in 2018, our expectations of video games are rightly so much greater. The standards of adventure games improved dramatically in subsequent decades. If you are looking for a Myst style puzzle world to lose one’s self in in 2018, Jonathan Blow’s game “The Witness” is arguably a strong modern spiritual successor.
  - mikepurvis 8y ago
    +1 on The Witness, but there's an entire genre now of walksim games that follow on the pattern of puzzles, story, exploration and non-combat engagement: https://www.slant.co/topics/6377/~walking-simulator-games-on-steam https://www.slant.co/topics/6377/~walking-simulator-games-on... And really this is just a continuation of the larger "adventure game" genre that Myst itself is a part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game
dmschulman 8y ago
The documentary that was included with the CDROM definitely looks 25 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI I still watch this thing every couple of years and remember how much I loved that game.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
I played Myst when I was a kid, but even to this day, never really understood it. I kept going back to other games, like Kings Quest 6, that had characters and whose world felt lived in. Also, I despised the Quicktime for Windows that it installed with.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Which, IIRC, played a “calibration video” on first install. I’d never seen such a concept before or after.
codingdave 8y ago
Also released in 1993 was the first of the X-wing series from LucasArts. I ended up only playing Myst a couple years later, after hearing so much hype... but the pace was so different that it wasn't living up to that hype for my personal tastes. Still, even not being a big fan, I do recall that everyone talked about it, even in those days where gaming was nowhere near the popularity it is today.
jandrese 8y ago
If anybody is still jonesing for that Myst hit, the pointlessly-online version is completely free to play: https://mystonline.com/en/ https://mystonline.com/en/
- severine 8y ago
  If they're really jonesing they'd like to know that you have to create an account to download a Windows only installer ;)
  - phaylon 8y ago
    And they want your phone number :)
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  It once had a point to its online, it just never had the Publishers / budget to execute on that vision. The fact that it is free to play online today is a testament to tenacity in the face of two and a half cancellations, a lot of corporate misery, and the hearts of a lot of earnest fans.
toast0 8y ago
I never owned a copy, so inevitably I only played Myst at computer stores -- it looked interesting, but I never really understood what was going on. Games of this era would tend to come with an instruction manual that was book sized and could really help with understanding what was going on. For the Mystics? out there, what's the best way to play the game for a person who knows of Myst, but hasn't every played it? What can I read to get started, but that's not a walkthrough? Sort of related, I recall Pyst appearing in stores about a year or two after Myst; is that worth trying to run as well?
- danesparza 8y ago
  To be clear: Pyst (which I had never heard of until this post) is a parody of Myst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyst
- OrwellianChild 8y ago
  Myst is kind of defined by it's lack of boundaries and structure. The point is to just boot up the game and start exploring and interacting. The story will slowly unfold as you explore the world. The only think you really need to understand is that all the buttons and switches do affect the world, so observe the results of all your tinkering.
- nategri 8y ago
  I played Pyst and uh, no.
- chungy 8y ago
  The best way to play it new, now, is probably realMyst Masterpiece Edition: https://www.gog.com/game/real_myst_masterpiece_edition https://www.gog.com/game/real_myst_masterpiece_edition The original still-frame version is available as well; GOG packages both Myst Masterpiece Edition and Riven with ScummVM so they don't have any compatibility headaches (I recall back in the day, having huge problems since they required QuickTime installed, and only _SPECIFIC_ versions of QuickTime, not newer nor older ones). There are fans that swear by the original still-frame only. It is fine, but I've always felt that immersion was kind of the whole point of the game, and realMyst provides that far better.
reidrac 8y ago
Never played the game, but someone bought me the novels in a pack for my birthday and because back then I would read anything, I read them without many expectations, and they were quite alright. All the world rules and the lore was interesting, but I don't know how much of that would be in the games. The books didn't have tricky puzzles, of course, but I kind of tells how big the games were.
- Fellshard 8y ago
  I'd still recommend them today. Riven is a triumph of world-building fused with gameplay, even if some of the navigation gets a bit too obtuse. The later Ubisoft games are visual spectacles that maybe expect a bit too much generalized scientific knowledge in places. Haven't gotten around to Myst V yet...
Eyght 8y ago
The article didn't make mention of the role of sound in Myst. I remember people setting up their big 90's stereos with massive speakers to fully immerse themselves in the Myst world. The game really built a strange, otherworldy atmosphere.
- dmschulman 8y ago
  Some of the best music ever composed for a computer game I'd argue.
  - drdeadringer 8y ago
    I've some of the OSTs at home 'cause I liked it so much.
    - duskwuff 8y ago
      They're available on iTunes, FWIW. I'm especially fond of the Riven soundtrack; it's got a great meditative mood to it. https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/robyn-miller/447729601 https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/robyn-miller/447729601
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  I remember seeing a TV special on how they came up with the sound effects. One of them was created by something along the lines of rotating a vibrating wrench just inside a toilet bowl... and all the sound effects was stuff like that.
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
    It was amazing learning all of that back when the game was new... and it's still a great lesson today: http://www.mystjourney.com/myst/studies/ http://www.mystjourney.com/myst/studies/ The video has the bubbles-in-the-toilet-bowl explanation (see 7:30 onwards), along with a ton of other great nuggets.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Myst required a CD ROM drive — one of the earliest games to do so. This when optical drives were new, add-on devices that few people had. This should have been an obstacle to the game's success but lesson learned: it seems that everyone that had a CD ROM drive bought the game. I'll never to fall for the least-common-denominator school of marketing. Ship your games and require the most high-end of hardware. :-) Oh, and it helps if your game is great (and the game's size no doubt helped reduce piracy).
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > it seems that everyone that had a CD ROM drive bought the game. And a lot of people bought new computers with CD ROM drives just to play the game. It’s really what popularized the CD ROM in a lot of ways.
- magicnubs 8y ago
  > I'll never to fall for the least-common-denominator school of marketing. Ship your games and require the most high-end of hardware. :-) Worked for building hype for Crysis, for a while anyway
danesparza 8y ago
This article misses a few major points about Myst (IMHO): - Myst was one of the first CD-ROM based games. It helped drive CD-ROM adoption. Even Doom (which came out around the same time) was installed via floppy. - Myst felt expansive in a way that made it ahead of it's time by several years. - Myst made you feel like you were in the middle of a story. Its lack of interaction made the player the focus of the game -- which was unique at the time.
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elorant 8y ago
The one thing that I remember about Myst is how damn hard it was. Adventures games of the time were all about combining items and trying things. To solve Myst you had to immerse yourself in the story. You couldn't just try dumb luck, it wouldn't work like that. This along with the spectacular graphics and the storytelling was that made it a milestone in video games.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Maybe I'm a stupid person, or maybe it's just that I'm not a native English speaker or that I get bored of games super quick. Myst was one of the first games I ever bought (I mean... bought with my parents money :-) and played for maybe something like 10 to 15 hours? The only thing I remember about Myst is that I made absolutely no progress. Like none. I couldn't even get the premise. I was stuck at the very first stage of whatever puzzle the game had. I suppose I was something like 12 years old.
poisonarena 8y ago
Real hackernews readers have played Cyans other games, like Spelunx, and unlocked the secret level by entering the code in the elevator
neom 8y ago
Shout out to the grim fandango, my second fav game.
whamlastxmas 8y ago
Just throwing this out there for Riven fans: A community-made (still in progress with a long way to go) 3D real-time version of Riven: http://www.starryexpanse.com/ http://www.starryexpanse.com/
illlogic2 8y ago
All those looking for a fresh Myst-like experience should check out Quern: Undying Thoughts.
- k__ 8y ago
  liked it very much. talos principle was nice too
libraryatnight 8y ago
Myst was so immersive. For me it created a real sense of wonder and exploration. There was something beautiful about being alone in a gorgeous world filled with puzzles that gradually revealed a story. Also the first Myst tie-in novel is one of the only game tie-in books that I really enjoyed. I was quite young, so I'm not sure how the book holds up, but I remember really enjoying it.
symfoniq 8y ago
It's entirely possible that the only reason I'm a programmer today is because of Myst. For reasons that I either never fully learned or fail to remember, my father received a CD in the mail from Myst's publisher (Broderbund?) containing a demo of the game. Only, someone screwed up, and instead of the CD containing a demo, it actually contained almost the entire game in a just-before-release, playable state (only a single world was unfinished). And all the HyperCard scripting was unlocked and viewable by the player. Myst was amazing for its era, so of course, wanting to know how such a game was possible, I took full advantage of being able to read all of the HyperTalk code. And I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't use this access to "solve" a few of the more difficult puzzles. The times spent understanding and "hacking" Myst are among my fondest memories. All of this led to me learning HyperCard and HyperTalk myself, and eventually moving on to CodeWarrior/C, Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc. So thanks to Robyn and Rand Miller for the awesome memories. It had a huge impact on my life.
- AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
  Have you ever thought of uploading that HyperCard stack somewhere? I mean it would probably be taken down in a heartbeat, because the disclosure of the source code was very likely unintentional, but, you never know!
  - symfoniq 8y ago
    Unfortunately, the CD is long lost to the "mysts" of time...
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    The release version of Myst was a Hypercard stack, too, at least on the Mac. If you changed the type/creator on the right data files, you could open them in Hypercard. The images wouldn't display without some extra jiggery-pokery, but I do recall being able to view the scripts. Hypercard didn't support any sort of source code encoding, so the scripts were out there in the open.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Fellow Myst and HyperCard enthusiast who used to have a CodeWarrior t-shirt, checking in. I wouldn't be where I am today without all of that stuff too. I would love to see that stack...
jamesfmilne 8y ago
FYI they recently did a kickstarter for a special Myst 25th Anniversary Collection of all the Myst games in a special linking book box, complete with video screen! I'm eagering awaiting delivery of mine: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-anniversary-collection https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-an...
NeoBasilisk 8y ago
My first game of the point and click adventure genre was Return to Zork, which I believe was released a few months prior to Myst and had many similarities, but was never nearly as popular for whatever reason.
rocky1138 8y ago
If you haven't had the chance to play Scratches, another game mentioned in the article, you should. It's fantastic and has a really great soundtrack. The developer is launching a new scary adventure game, soon, and it looks really really good.
hnu0847 8y ago
Here's an interesting video about the game's history and creation: https://youtu.be/h4wWITMUop0 https://youtu.be/h4wWITMUop0 ("A Brief History of...Myst" (2016))
walrus01 8y ago
Until today I had no idea that the two guys who created Cyan were from a rural area outside Spokane. What a random pacific northwest trivia tidbit.
baud147258 8y ago
There's a very good article on Myst, with a lot of details on its history there: https://medium.com/picking-up-the-pieces/two-histories-of-myst-8b37e1504f9e https://medium.com/picking-up-the-pieces/two-histories-of-my... Also this article spend a lot of time talking about the cultural impact of Myst, now and then.
xfitm3 8y ago
I remember the long periods of inactivity in Myst. The time to slow down and think. A stark contrast to games I've played recently.

214 points by johnshades 8y ago

Myst was the first really immersive game I remember playing and thinking "I feel like I'm actually a part of this world". I was a bit too young to really grasp how to play it but that didn't stop me clicking around just exploring because the game (for its time) was just so beautiful and engaging despite the graphical limitations at the time. For those looking for a Myst nostalgia trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtO4E3cIn0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtO4E3cIn0w

madeuptempacct 8y ago
I didn't care about Myst at all. I don't get what the big deal is, never did.
- drb91 8y ago
  1) the visuals were excellent, and still hold up against contemporary games. 2) the narrative was high quality. 3) the puzzles were very satisfying to solve. Aside from that, it’s just taste, my friend.
  - poisonarena 8y ago
    Also.. the soundstrack was amazing (and CD Quality!!), really added to the ambience of the levels.. Myst Soundtrack - 15 Above Stoneship (Telescope Theme) https://youtu.be/MTruv9DbnrE https://youtu.be/MTruv9DbnrE
- Z-Widwil 8y ago
  Did you play it around the years that it first released, or in later years? I didn't play it until the Windows release, but even then, it was vastly different from many games available at that time. The graphics were very obviously ahead of most games. While many games do so now (and some over do it), Myst provided a very cinematic experience. Most of all though was the immersion. Many games had addicting gameplay, but few tried to captivate the player in the same way Myst did. It is of course a point of preference, but it did a lot to draw in the player. Not all of the clues were known to be clues at the time. You could discover something and not know what it did until later on. Then it became a point of realization. You weren't playing the role of a super soldier or simulating someone else. You as the player were the one discovering pieces of this world and helping it unfold. This was extremely captivating. Even to those of a young age who didn't entirely get it. It just provided a different experience from most games at the time. An experience that has been emulated through different means like flash games, but hasn't been recreated in a meaningful way.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Neither did I, to the degree I never played it. I thought of it as pseudo computer game for people that didn't know how much better it could be, even though I had a friend or two that played computer games that really liked Myst and it's sequel. It's pretty plain looking back that in my case it was just arrogance on my part, since I never even played them. I just couldn't imagine then how it could compare to Space Quest, King's Quest, Alone in the Dark, etc. Now I can imagine a few ways in which they might have been able to leverage the format and limitations to expand the world and puzzles in different ways that weren't feasible for other games.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
It's funny looking at it now, because in my head it was basically photo-realistic! For the era it was such a mind-blowing game, and that's really saying something considering it's the same year that gave us NBA Jam, Virtua Fighter, Ridge Racer, Star Fox, X-Wing, Link's Awakening, Doom, and Mega Man X (what a year!).
- poisonarena 8y ago
  I think the pog craze, mtv liquid television/beavis and butthead was the same year as well..

annadane 8y ago

Riven was absolutely captivating for its time. It still looks gorgeous today. They did an absolutely incredible job.

petermcneeley 8y ago
The visual quality of Riven is stunning. Making of doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpE8NzIVDZ8 My article on riven graphics vs the latest in the myst series. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-offline-vs-realtime.html http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-of...
- mercer 8y ago
  Nice article! Putting the more technical aspects aside, I found the games after Riven to be lacking something, and I only discovered afterwards (maybe even only after the second post-Riven game) that it wasn't by the original studio/team/brothers. Uru, despite its many problems, seemed to recapture some of that magic. But I'll always wonder if that's actually true, or just because I knew the original team (or at least one of the brothers?) was involved again. (Not that the Riven sequels were bad! I quite enjoyed Myst 3)
duskwuff 8y ago
Riven was also a huge improvement in worldbuilding. The world of Myst was often rather contrived; the places it depicted didn't always seem particularly "lived in", and the puzzles were often rather contrived in nature -- in many cases, their motivation was simply that the world itself was created as a puzzle. The rocket ship piano puzzle falls squarely into this category, for instance! Riven, on the other hand, depicted a much more natural-seeming world, and its puzzles fit much more organically into that world. For instance, one early puzzle involves learning the Rivenese number system from a child's toy. Some of the Moiety puzzles seem a little artificial, but even those do have some in-game motivation (as part of a security system).
- geerlingguy 8y ago

dabernathy89 8y ago

An aside, but I'd love to have Myst, Riven, and the other sequels available on the Switch.

kbenson 8y ago
Apparently Myst was released for the 3DS in 2012. Not sure about any sequels.
Z-Widwil 8y ago
If you need a portable version, it is available on iOS (and realMyst is available on Android) and a demo is available for both. It is also available on DS and PSP but I wouldn't recommend those version as much. I've played the iOS version and touch controls offer a good recreation of the original. Though I would recommend it for replaying the game, not playing it the first time. Some of the immersion is lost on playing a device that can provide other distractions. For me, playing through while sitting down at a screen with a notebook next to you for tracking things you find, is the best way to play for the first time.

apercu 8y ago

I sort of got sidetracked in the article when I read this: "As we collaborated over puzzles played out on vintage machinery, my older daughter said, “People back then must have been incredibly creative to make something like this." I don't know any 6 or 8 year olds that talk like that.

drb91 8y ago
Maybe it’s paraphrased? The sentiment seems to make sense to me. Either way, I enjoyed the post.
jfrankamp 8y ago
Not saying you're wrong, its anecdotal on both our parts. But I do! If you say to a kid "They built all of this by hand on pen and paper from ideas in their head! (amazed expression)" they'll parrot back to you the above sentence if they catch the meaning and context. My 3 year old does this already, although she'll say "fantastic" instead of "incredible".
- Loughla 8y ago
  I would agree with this. My observations after having children, is that they do exactly what they see until they understand what they see and make it their own. For example - my youngest recently had an abscessed tooth removed. He is 5 this year. The dental surgeon was astounded that he used the words nitrous-oxide and Novocain. The surgeon said things like giggle gas and sleepy juice, and the five year old dead pan corrected him. Kids will say what they hear - outside of a disability/difference of that kind. If they hear short baby talk, they say short baby talk. If they hear larger words, in context, often, then they'll use those.
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Reminds me of those "How will I explain the results of the 2016 election to my 5 year old!!!" ... they don't care. At all.
sbjustin 8y ago
My 3 year old daughter told me that I was a "fabulous dad" the other day. Neither my wife or I use that word. It's amazing what kids can say and think.

NickBusey 8y ago

I can't wait for the inevitable Myst VR remake.

abakker 8y ago
I've said to several of my friends that this would be the killer VR game for me. Just give me a giant world to explore!
- reidrac 8y ago
  You may find this interview interesting then: https://theretrohour.com/the-making-of-myst-and-riven-with-robyn-miller-the-retro-hour-ep60/ https://theretrohour.com/the-making-of-myst-and-riven-with-r... (I won't spoil you if there will be or not a Myst VR, go and listen to it)
- weaksauce 8y ago
  if you haven't played it obduction is also in VR and is also made by cyan. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it's definitely harder than myst was.
  - giobox 8y ago
    Yep, this basically is the VR Myst, no need to hold off. It’s of course compromised in all the usual ways 2018 VR typically is, but if you want a Myst style adventure in an expensive, low res vomit inducing uncomfortable headset, have at it! (I say this as a very disgruntled Oculus Rift + Touch owner...)
    - jamiek88 8y ago
      Kind of fitting that Myst was at the edge of technological capability back then, stretching cdrom tech. Now we are at the ‘barely able to do it cheaply’ stage for VR bringing it back to that medium or Cyan doing something in VR like the old days we need imagination from the players too, letting imperfections slide as long as the story is there.
    - 8y ago

wycy 8y ago

I don't know if I was just too young at the time, but I had Myst/Riven as a kid and never even began to understand what the objective was or what I was supposed to do. Aside from a little bit of walking back and forth, I don't think I accomplished a single thing in game. Given the article references 6 and 8 year olds playing, maybe I was just a dumb kid.

wmeredith 8y ago
Nah, I think you were just too young. Sure there were outliers, but it was targeted at an older gaming crowd.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  We played it as a family; one of us would take notes, another would be 'at the controls', and the rest would be observing and helping solve the puzzles. Social gaming back before everyone had their own pocket-sized computer :-)
  - jfk13 8y ago
    Yes - this was a large part of the delight! My kids and I spent many enjoyable hours together with the Myst games.
lgeorget 8y ago
Or just not patient enough? Note that the kids from the article were guided by their parent in the game. My experience is not very different from yours. I remember going back and forth on the first island and playing with the different puzzles. I was just minding my own business in the game and imagining my own story without taking any interest in the game scenario.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  The world was more boring then. Myst might have been the only interesting game you had for a month or more.

gdubs 8y ago

I vividly recall playing Myst, headphones on, snow falling outside, in a time before cellphones and (for our family) high speed internet. Cliche as it is, I felt transported. At times I felt spooked. I also remember getting a hold of every magazine I could that went into the making of Myst, transfixed by the creators’ sketches and drawings. Few cultural artifacts — not limited to games — have had as lasting an impact as those days playing Myst in my bedroom in the mid 90s.

giobox 8y ago
For me, this is where memories of Myst are best left. At the time I loved it, but in the early 90s one was willing to forgive a game a great many short-comings in sympathy to the state of modern games technology. Myst was very much “state of the art of the possible at the time”. I’d argue that much of the appeal of 90s Myst for some was that such a world could be made at all, let alone be a reasonably competent adventure game to boot. It was also one of the first to give us an excuse to do something cool with our fancy new CD-ROM drives. Timing was critical too for Myst too I think; it came at the point when many ‘ordinary’ (for want of a better word) families were buying their first home PCs. My experience was that Myst and Riven found fans among people not traditionally PC gamers, often via word of mouth that this was something interesting one could do on their relatively expensive new fangled PC investment. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think it holds up all that well as a ‘game’ in 2018, our expectations of video games are rightly so much greater. The standards of adventure games improved dramatically in subsequent decades. If you are looking for a Myst style puzzle world to lose one’s self in in 2018, Jonathan Blow’s game “The Witness” is arguably a strong modern spiritual successor.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  +1 on The Witness, but there's an entire genre now of walksim games that follow on the pattern of puzzles, story, exploration and non-combat engagement: https://www.slant.co/topics/6377/~walking-simulator-games-on-steam https://www.slant.co/topics/6377/~walking-simulator-games-on... And really this is just a continuation of the larger "adventure game" genre that Myst itself is a part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game

dmschulman 8y ago

The documentary that was included with the CDROM definitely looks 25 years old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI I still watch this thing every couple of years and remember how much I loved that game.

theandrewbailey 8y ago

I played Myst when I was a kid, but even to this day, never really understood it. I kept going back to other games, like Kings Quest 6, that had characters and whose world felt lived in. Also, I despised the Quicktime for Windows that it installed with.

Karunamon 8y ago
Which, IIRC, played a “calibration video” on first install. I’d never seen such a concept before or after.

codingdave 8y ago

Also released in 1993 was the first of the X-wing series from LucasArts. I ended up only playing Myst a couple years later, after hearing so much hype... but the pace was so different that it wasn't living up to that hype for my personal tastes. Still, even not being a big fan, I do recall that everyone talked about it, even in those days where gaming was nowhere near the popularity it is today.

jandrese 8y ago

If anybody is still jonesing for that Myst hit, the pointlessly-online version is completely free to play: https://mystonline.com/en/ https://mystonline.com/en/

severine 8y ago
If they're really jonesing they'd like to know that you have to create an account to download a Windows only installer ;)
- phaylon 8y ago
  And they want your phone number :)
WorldMaker 8y ago
It once had a point to its online, it just never had the Publishers / budget to execute on that vision. The fact that it is free to play online today is a testament to tenacity in the face of two and a half cancellations, a lot of corporate misery, and the hearts of a lot of earnest fans.

toast0 8y ago

I never owned a copy, so inevitably I only played Myst at computer stores -- it looked interesting, but I never really understood what was going on. Games of this era would tend to come with an instruction manual that was book sized and could really help with understanding what was going on. For the Mystics? out there, what's the best way to play the game for a person who knows of Myst, but hasn't every played it? What can I read to get started, but that's not a walkthrough? Sort of related, I recall Pyst appearing in stores about a year or two after Myst; is that worth trying to run as well?

danesparza 8y ago
To be clear: Pyst (which I had never heard of until this post) is a parody of Myst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyst
OrwellianChild 8y ago
Myst is kind of defined by it's lack of boundaries and structure. The point is to just boot up the game and start exploring and interacting. The story will slowly unfold as you explore the world. The only think you really need to understand is that all the buttons and switches do affect the world, so observe the results of all your tinkering.
nategri 8y ago
I played Pyst and uh, no.
chungy 8y ago
The best way to play it new, now, is probably realMyst Masterpiece Edition: https://www.gog.com/game/real_myst_masterpiece_edition https://www.gog.com/game/real_myst_masterpiece_edition The original still-frame version is available as well; GOG packages both Myst Masterpiece Edition and Riven with ScummVM so they don't have any compatibility headaches (I recall back in the day, having huge problems since they required QuickTime installed, and only _SPECIFIC_ versions of QuickTime, not newer nor older ones). There are fans that swear by the original still-frame only. It is fine, but I've always felt that immersion was kind of the whole point of the game, and realMyst provides that far better.

reidrac 8y ago

Never played the game, but someone bought me the novels in a pack for my birthday and because back then I would read anything, I read them without many expectations, and they were quite alright. All the world rules and the lore was interesting, but I don't know how much of that would be in the games. The books didn't have tricky puzzles, of course, but I kind of tells how big the games were.

Fellshard 8y ago
I'd still recommend them today. Riven is a triumph of world-building fused with gameplay, even if some of the navigation gets a bit too obtuse. The later Ubisoft games are visual spectacles that maybe expect a bit too much generalized scientific knowledge in places. Haven't gotten around to Myst V yet...

Eyght 8y ago

The article didn't make mention of the role of sound in Myst. I remember people setting up their big 90's stereos with massive speakers to fully immerse themselves in the Myst world. The game really built a strange, otherworldy atmosphere.

dmschulman 8y ago
Some of the best music ever composed for a computer game I'd argue.
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  I've some of the OSTs at home 'cause I liked it so much.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    They're available on iTunes, FWIW. I'm especially fond of the Riven soundtrack; it's got a great meditative mood to it. https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/robyn-miller/447729601 https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/robyn-miller/447729601
drdeadringer 8y ago
I remember seeing a TV special on how they came up with the sound effects. One of them was created by something along the lines of rotating a vibrating wrench just inside a toilet bowl... and all the sound effects was stuff like that.
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  It was amazing learning all of that back when the game was new... and it's still a great lesson today: http://www.mystjourney.com/myst/studies/ http://www.mystjourney.com/myst/studies/ The video has the bubbles-in-the-toilet-bowl explanation (see 7:30 onwards), along with a ton of other great nuggets.
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Myst required a CD ROM drive — one of the earliest games to do so. This when optical drives were new, add-on devices that few people had. This should have been an obstacle to the game's success but lesson learned: it seems that everyone that had a CD ROM drive bought the game. I'll never to fall for the least-common-denominator school of marketing. Ship your games and require the most high-end of hardware. :-) Oh, and it helps if your game is great (and the game's size no doubt helped reduce piracy).

Alex3917 8y ago
> it seems that everyone that had a CD ROM drive bought the game. And a lot of people bought new computers with CD ROM drives just to play the game. It’s really what popularized the CD ROM in a lot of ways.
magicnubs 8y ago
> I'll never to fall for the least-common-denominator school of marketing. Ship your games and require the most high-end of hardware. :-) Worked for building hype for Crysis, for a while anyway

danesparza 8y ago

This article misses a few major points about Myst (IMHO): - Myst was one of the first CD-ROM based games. It helped drive CD-ROM adoption. Even Doom (which came out around the same time) was installed via floppy. - Myst felt expansive in a way that made it ahead of it's time by several years. - Myst made you feel like you were in the middle of a story. Its lack of interaction made the player the focus of the game -- which was unique at the time.

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elorant 8y ago

The one thing that I remember about Myst is how damn hard it was. Adventures games of the time were all about combining items and trying things. To solve Myst you had to immerse yourself in the story. You couldn't just try dumb luck, it wouldn't work like that. This along with the spectacular graphics and the storytelling was that made it a milestone in video games.

gnulinux 8y ago
Maybe I'm a stupid person, or maybe it's just that I'm not a native English speaker or that I get bored of games super quick. Myst was one of the first games I ever bought (I mean... bought with my parents money :-) and played for maybe something like 10 to 15 hours? The only thing I remember about Myst is that I made absolutely no progress. Like none. I couldn't even get the premise. I was stuck at the very first stage of whatever puzzle the game had. I suppose I was something like 12 years old.

poisonarena 8y ago

Real hackernews readers have played Cyans other games, like Spelunx, and unlocked the secret level by entering the code in the elevator

neom 8y ago

Shout out to the grim fandango, my second fav game.

whamlastxmas 8y ago

Just throwing this out there for Riven fans: A community-made (still in progress with a long way to go) 3D real-time version of Riven: http://www.starryexpanse.com/ http://www.starryexpanse.com/

illlogic2 8y ago

All those looking for a fresh Myst-like experience should check out Quern: Undying Thoughts.

k__ 8y ago
liked it very much. talos principle was nice too

libraryatnight 8y ago

Myst was so immersive. For me it created a real sense of wonder and exploration. There was something beautiful about being alone in a gorgeous world filled with puzzles that gradually revealed a story. Also the first Myst tie-in novel is one of the only game tie-in books that I really enjoyed. I was quite young, so I'm not sure how the book holds up, but I remember really enjoying it.

symfoniq 8y ago

It's entirely possible that the only reason I'm a programmer today is because of Myst. For reasons that I either never fully learned or fail to remember, my father received a CD in the mail from Myst's publisher (Broderbund?) containing a demo of the game. Only, someone screwed up, and instead of the CD containing a demo, it actually contained almost the entire game in a just-before-release, playable state (only a single world was unfinished). And all the HyperCard scripting was unlocked and viewable by the player. Myst was amazing for its era, so of course, wanting to know how such a game was possible, I took full advantage of being able to read all of the HyperTalk code. And I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't use this access to "solve" a few of the more difficult puzzles. The times spent understanding and "hacking" Myst are among my fondest memories. All of this led to me learning HyperCard and HyperTalk myself, and eventually moving on to CodeWarrior/C, Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc. So thanks to Robyn and Rand Miller for the awesome memories. It had a huge impact on my life.

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
Have you ever thought of uploading that HyperCard stack somewhere? I mean it would probably be taken down in a heartbeat, because the disclosure of the source code was very likely unintentional, but, you never know!
- symfoniq 8y ago
  Unfortunately, the CD is long lost to the "mysts" of time...
- duskwuff 8y ago
  The release version of Myst was a Hypercard stack, too, at least on the Mac. If you changed the type/creator on the right data files, you could open them in Hypercard. The images wouldn't display without some extra jiggery-pokery, but I do recall being able to view the scripts. Hypercard didn't support any sort of source code encoding, so the scripts were out there in the open.
steveklabnik 8y ago
Fellow Myst and HyperCard enthusiast who used to have a CodeWarrior t-shirt, checking in. I wouldn't be where I am today without all of that stuff too. I would love to see that stack...

jamesfmilne 8y ago

FYI they recently did a kickstarter for a special Myst 25th Anniversary Collection of all the Myst games in a special linking book box, complete with video screen! I'm eagering awaiting delivery of mine: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-anniversary-collection https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1252280491/myst-25th-an...

NeoBasilisk 8y ago

My first game of the point and click adventure genre was Return to Zork, which I believe was released a few months prior to Myst and had many similarities, but was never nearly as popular for whatever reason.

rocky1138 8y ago

If you haven't had the chance to play Scratches, another game mentioned in the article, you should. It's fantastic and has a really great soundtrack. The developer is launching a new scary adventure game, soon, and it looks really really good.

hnu0847 8y ago

Here's an interesting video about the game's history and creation: https://youtu.be/h4wWITMUop0 https://youtu.be/h4wWITMUop0 ("A Brief History of...Myst" (2016))

walrus01 8y ago

Until today I had no idea that the two guys who created Cyan were from a rural area outside Spokane. What a random pacific northwest trivia tidbit.

baud147258 8y ago

There's a very good article on Myst, with a lot of details on its history there: https://medium.com/picking-up-the-pieces/two-histories-of-myst-8b37e1504f9e https://medium.com/picking-up-the-pieces/two-histories-of-my... Also this article spend a lot of time talking about the cultural impact of Myst, now and then.

xfitm3 8y ago

I remember the long periods of inactivity in Myst. The time to slow down and think. A stark contrast to games I've played recently.