Myst
Encyclopedia
Myst is a graphic adventure
video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn
and Rand Miller
. It was developed by Cyan (now Cyan Worlds), a Spokane, Washington
––based studio, and published
and distributed by Brøderbund
. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS
computer on September 24, 1993; it was developer Cyan's largest project to date. Remakes and ports
of the game have been released for Sega Saturn
, Microsoft Windows
, Atari Jaguar CD
, 3DO
, CD-i
, PlayStation, AmigaOS
, PlayStation Portable
, Nintendo DS
, and iOS by publishers Midway Games
, Sunsoft, and Mean Hamster Software
.
Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger
, who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as "Ages". Clues found in each of these Ages help to reveal the back-story of the game's characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.
Upon release, Myst was a surprise hit, with critics lauding the ability of the game to immerse players in the fictional world. The game was the best-selling PC game, until The Sims
exceeded its sales in . Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM
format. Mysts success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels.
The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person
journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking
or dragging them. To assist in rapidly crossing areas already explored, Myst has an optional "Zip" feature. When a lightning bolt cursor appears, players can click and skip several frames to another location. While this provides a rapid method of travel, it can also cause players to miss important items and clues. Some items can be carried by the player and read, including journal pages which provide backstory
. Players can only carry a single page at a time, and pages return to their original locations when dropped.
To complete the game, the player must explore the seemingly deserted island of Myst. There the player discovers and follows clues to be transported via "linking books" to several "Ages", each of which is a self-contained mini-world. Each Age—named Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood—requires the user to solve a series of logical, interrelated puzzles to complete its exploration. Objects and information discovered in one Age may be required to solve puzzles in another Age, or to complete the game's primary puzzle on Myst. For example, in order to activate a switch, players must first open a safe and use the matches found within to start a boiler.
Apart from its predominantly nonverbal storytelling, Mysts gameplay is unusual among adventuring computer games in several ways. The player is provided with very little backstory at the beginning of the game, and no obvious goals or objectives are laid out. This means that players must simply begin to explore. There are no obvious enemies, no physical violence
, and no threat of "dying" at any point, although it is possible to reach a few "losing" endings. There is no time limit to complete the game. The game unfolds at its own pace and is solved through a combination of patience, observation, and logical thinking.
As the Stranger continues to explore the island, more books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The Stranger must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the Stranger adds more pages to these books, the brothers can speak more and more clearly. Each brother maintains that the other brother cannot be trusted. After collecting four pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the Stranger where the fifth page is hidden. If the Stranger gives either brother their fifth page, they will be free. The Stranger is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.
Both brothers beg the Stranger not to touch the green book that is stored in the same location as their last pages. They claim that it is a book like their own that will trap the Stranger. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where Atrus is imprisoned. When the book is opened, Atrus asks the Stranger to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island; without it, he cannot bring his sons to justice. The game has several endings, depending on the player's actions. Giving either Sirrus or Achenar the final page of their book causes the Stranger to switch places with the son, leaving the player trapped inside the Prison book. Linking to D'ni without the page Atrus asks for leaves the Stranger and Atrus trapped on D'ni. Linking to D'ni with the page allows Atrus to complete his Myst book and return to the island. Upon returning to the library, the player finds the red and blue books gone, and burn marks on the shelves where they used to be.
, who together made up Cyan, Inc.
The company had previously only made children's games. Myst was conceived by the brothers as a challenging but aesthetically simple game that would appeal to adults; Myst was not only the largest collaboration Cyan had attempted at the time, but also took the longest to develop. According to Rand Miller, the brothers spent months solely designing the look and puzzles of the Ages, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" made for children. According to the creators, the game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island
by Jules Verne
.
At first, the developers had no idea how they would actually create the physical terrain for the Ages. Eventually, they created grayscale heightmap
s, extruding them to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap which was wrapped over the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design. Rand noted that attention to detail allowed Myst to deal with the limitations of CD-ROM drives and graphics, stating "A lot can be done with texture…Like finding an interesting texture you can map into the tapestry on the wall, spending a little extra time to actually put the bumps on the tapestry, putting screws in things. These are the things you don't necessarily notice, but if they weren't there, would flag to your subconscious that this is fake."
The game was created on Macintosh
computers, principally Macintosh Quadra
s. The graphics were individual shots of fully rendered rooms. Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore. Each scene was modeled and rendered in StrataVision 3D
, with some additional modeling in Macromedia
MacroModel. The images were then edited and enhanced using Photoshop
1.0.
The original Macintosh version of Myst was constructed in HyperCard
. Each Age was a unique HyperCard
stack. Navigation was handled by the internal button system and HyperTalk
scripts, with image and QuickTime
movie display passed off to various plugins; essentially, Myst functions as a series of separate multimedia slides linked together by commands. As the main technical constraint that impacted Myst was slow CD-ROM
drive read speeds, Cyan had to go to great lengths to make sure all the game elements loaded as quickly as possible. Images were stored as 8-bit PICT
resources with custom color palettes and QuickTime still image compression. Animated elements such as movies and object animations were encoded as QuickTime movies with Cinepak
compression; in total, there were more than 66 minutes of Quicktime animation. This careful processing made the finished graphics look like truecolor images despite their low bit depth; the stills were reduced in size from 500 KB
to around 80 KB.
and incidental sounds in the game. To make sure the sounds fit, Brandkamp had to wait until the game's visuals were placed in context. Sound effects were drawn from unlikely sources; the noise of a fire in a boiler was created by driving slowly over stones in a driveway, because recordings of actual fire did not sound like fire burning. The chimes of a large clock tower were simulated using a wrench, then transposed to a lower pitch.
At first, Myst had no music, because the Millers did not want music to interfere with the gameplay. After a few tests, they realized that the background music did not adversely affect the game and, in fact, "seemed to really help the mood of certain places that you were at in the game." Robyn Miller ended up composing 40 minutes of synthesized
music that was used in the game and later published as Myst: The Soundtrack. Initially, Cyan released the soundtrack via a mail-order service, but before the release of Mysts sequel, Riven
, Virgin Records
acquired the rights to release the soundtrack, and the CD was rereleased on April 21, 1998.
, it was widely regarded as a killer application
that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. The game's success also led to a number of games which sought to copy Mysts success, referred to as "Myst clones". Myst was the bestselling PC game throughout the 1990s, until The Sims
exceeded its sales in 2002. The PC version of Myst holds an average score of 90% at GameRankings based on six reviews, although the subsequent remakes of the game and the console ports have generally received lower average scores. Mysts success baffled some who wondered how a game some saw as "little more than 'an interactive slide show'" turned out to be a hit.
Myst was generally praised by critics. Wired
and The New York Times
suggested that Myst was evidence that video games could in fact evolve into an art form. Entertainment Weekly
reported that some players considered Mysts "virtual morality" a religious experience. Aarhus University professor Søren Pold pointed to Myst as an excellent example of how stories can be told using objects rather than people. Laura Evenson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle
, pointed to adult-oriented games like Myst as evidence the video game industry was emerging from its "adolescent" phase.
GameSpot
's Jeff Sengstack wrote that "Myst is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let you go." Writing about Mysts reception, Greg M. Smith noted that Myst had become a hit and was regarded as incredibly immersive despite most closely resembling "the hoary technology of the slideshow
(with accompanying music and effects)". Smith concluded that "Mysts primary brilliance lies in the way it provides narrative justification for the very things that are most annoying" about the technological constraints imposed on the game; for instance, Macworld
praised Mysts designers for overcoming the occasionally debilitating slowness of CD drives to deliver a consistent experience throughout the game. The publication went on to declare Myst the best game of 1994, stating that Myst removed the "most annoying parts of adventure games — vocabularies that [you] don't understand, people you can't talk to, wrong moves that get you killed and make you start over. You try to unravel the enigma of the island by exploring the island, but there's no time pressure to distract you, no arbitrary punishments put in your way".
Some aspects of the game still received criticism. Several publications did not agree with the positive reception of the story; Jeremy Parrish of 1UP.com
noted that while Mysts lack of interaction and continual plot suited the game, it helped usher in the death of the adventure game genre. Edge
stated the main flaw with the game was that the game engine was nowhere near as sophisticated as the graphics. Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers
noted a few critics complained about the difficulty and lack of context of the puzzles, while others believed these elements added to the gameplay. Similarly, critics were split on whether the lack of a plot the player could actually change was a good or bad element. In a 2000 retrospective review, IGN
declared that Myst had not aged well and that playing it "was like watching hit TV shows from the 70s. 'People watched that?,' you wonder in horror."
was released on October 29, 1997, in which Atrus asks the Stranger to return to help him rescue his wife from Gehn. Myst III: Exile
was released simultaneously for Macintosh and Windows systems in North America on May 7, 2001, and was later ported to the PlayStation 2
and Xbox
consoles. Exile was not developed by Cyan; Presto Studios
developed the title and Ubisoft
published it. Taking place 10 years after the events of Riven, Exile reveals the reasons for Atrus' sons being imprisoned and the disastrous effects their greed caused. The fourth entry in the series, Myst IV: Revelation
, was released on September 10, 2004, and was developed and published entirely by Ubisoft. The music was composed by Jack Wall
with assistance from Peter Gabriel
. The final game in the Myst saga was Myst V: End of Ages
, developed by Cyan Worlds
and released on September 19, 2005.
In addition to the main Myst saga
, Cyan developed Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
, which was released on November 14, 2003. Uru allows players to customize their avatars
, and renders graphics in real-time. The multiplayer component of Uru was initially cancelled, but GameTap
eventually revived it as Myst Online: Uru Live
on February 15, 2007. On February 4, 2008, GameTap Creative Director Ricardo Sanchez announced that the game was cancelled, and that the servers would be shut down 60 days after the announcement. The game has since been brought back up again and is free to play. The Miller brothers collaborated with David Wingrove
and wrote several novels based on the Myst universe, which were published by Hyperion. The novels, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni, fill in the games' backstory and were packaged together as The Myst Reader
.
By 2003, the Myst franchise
had sold over 12 million copies worldwide, with Myst representing more than six million copies in the figure. The game's popularity has led to several mentions in popular culture. References to Myst made appearances in an episode of the The Simpsons
("Treehouse of Horror VI
"), and Matt Damon
wanted The Bourne Conspiracy video game
to be a puzzle game like Myst, refusing to lend his voice talent to the game when it was turned into a shooter instead. Myst has also been used for educational and scientific purposes; Becta
recognized a primary school teacher, Tim Rylands, who had made literacy gains using Myst as a teaching tool, and researchers have used the game for studies examining the effect of video games on aggression.
A parody computer game, Pyst
, was released in 1996.
, PlayStation, Jaguar CD
, AmigaOS
, CD-i
, and 3DO
consoles. The video game was also remade or ported to next-generation consoles and handhelds, as well as rereleased in new editions for the PC.
realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a remake of Myst released in November 2000 for Windows PCs, and in January 2002 for Mac. Unlike Myst and the Masterpiece Edition, realMyst featured free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics instead of pre-rendered stills. Weather effects like thunderstorms, sunsets, and sunrises were added to the Ages, and minor additions were made to keep the game in sync with the story of the Myst novels and sequels. The game also added a new Age called Rime, which is featured in an extended ending. realMyst was developed by Cyan, Inc. and Sunsoft, and published by Ubisoft
. While the new interactivity of the game was praised, realMyst ran extremely slowly on most computers of the time. Robyn Miller expressed frustration with realMyst, saying: "I only saw realMyst after it was released. As a remake, it was a lapse of reason and directionless; overt merchandising of the original Myst. It definitely wasn't how we originally envisioned Myst, as was promoted."
announced that they would be developing a remake of Myst for the PlayStation Portable
. The remake would include additional content that was not featured in the original Myst, including the Rime age that was earlier seen in realMyst. The game was released in Japan and Europe in 2006, and the US version was released in 2008.
A version of Myst for the Nintendo DS
was also released in December 2007. The version features re-mastered video and audio, using source code
specifically re-written for the Nintendo DS. The remake features Rime as a playable Age, with an all new graphic set. Myst DS was released in North America on May 13, 2008, and later reissued by Storm City Games. The title was heavily panned by the gaming press, with an aggregate score of 43/100 on Metacritic.
In February 2005, Cyan and Mean Hamster Software
released Myst for the Microsoft Pocket PC
platform; Riven
was ported shortly after. In August 2008, Cyan announced that the company was developing a version of Myst for Apple's iOS. Cyan confirmed that the project was near completion in April 2009, submitting the title to Apple on April 22. The game was made available to download from the iTunes App Store on May 2, 2009. The original download size was 727 MB, which was considered very large by iPhone standards.
Graphic adventure game
A graphic adventure game is a form of adventure game. They are distinct from text adventures. Whereas a player must actively observe using commands such as "look" in a text-based adventure, graphic adventures revolutionized gameplay by making use of natural human perception...
video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn
Robyn Miller
Robyn Charles Miller co-founded Cyan Worlds with brother Rand Miller. After releasing a number of children's adventure "worlds", the brothers finally hit on a success with the computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder of the 1990s...
and Rand Miller
Rand Miller
Rand Miller co-founded Cyan with brother Robyn Miller and became famous from the unexpected success of their computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder of the 1990s...
. It was developed by Cyan (now Cyan Worlds), a Spokane, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Spokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city of Spokane County of which it is also the county seat, and the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
––based studio, and published
Video game publisher
A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer....
and distributed by Brøderbund
Brøderbund
Brøderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of computer games, educational software and The Print Shop productivity tools. It was best known as the original creator and publisher of the popular Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, but moved to San Rafael,...
. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
computer on September 24, 1993; it was developer Cyan's largest project to date. Remakes and ports
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
of the game have been released for Sega Saturn
Sega Saturn
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Atari Jaguar CD
Atari Jaguar CD
The Atari Jaguar CD or Jag CD is a CD-ROM peripheral for the Atari Jaguar video game console.Late in the life span of the company, Atari released this long-promised CD-ROM unit. The unit hit shelves on September 11, 1995 and retailed for $149.95. The device sat atop the Jaguar console, snapping...
, 3DO
3DO Interactive Multiplayer
The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is a video game console originally produced by Panasonic in 1993. Further renditions of the hardware were released in 1994 by Sanyo and Goldstar. The consoles were manufactured according to specifications created by The 3DO Company, and were originally designed by...
, CD-i
CD-i
CD-i, or Compact Disc Interactive, is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard used by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was developed by Philips and Sony...
, PlayStation, AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
, PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
, Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, and iOS by publishers Midway Games
Midway Games
Midway Games, Inc. is an American company that was formerly a major video game publisher. Following a bankruptcy filing in 2009, it is no longer active and is in the process of liquidating all of its assets. Midway's titles included Mortal Kombat, Ms.Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Tron, Rampage, the...
, Sunsoft, and Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software, Inc. is a video game developer founded by John Swiderski in 1985. Mean Hamster Software created several games for the Atari 5200 from 1999-2004. They then created Myst for Windows Mobile in 2005, and after the release of Riven: The Sequel to Myst for Pocket PC in 2006, Mean...
.
Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger
Characters of Myst
The Myst series of adventure computer games deal with the events following the player's discovery of a mysterious book describing an island known as Myst. The book is no ordinary volume; it is a linking book, which serves as a portal to the world it describes. The player is transported to Myst...
, who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as "Ages". Clues found in each of these Ages help to reveal the back-story of the game's characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.
Upon release, Myst was a surprise hit, with critics lauding the ability of the game to immerse players in the fictional world. The game was the best-selling PC game, until The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
exceeded its sales in . Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
format. Mysts success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels.
Gameplay
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
or dragging them. To assist in rapidly crossing areas already explored, Myst has an optional "Zip" feature. When a lightning bolt cursor appears, players can click and skip several frames to another location. While this provides a rapid method of travel, it can also cause players to miss important items and clues. Some items can be carried by the player and read, including journal pages which provide backstory
Back-story
A back-story, background story, or backstory is the literary device of a narrative chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest. Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start...
. Players can only carry a single page at a time, and pages return to their original locations when dropped.
To complete the game, the player must explore the seemingly deserted island of Myst. There the player discovers and follows clues to be transported via "linking books" to several "Ages", each of which is a self-contained mini-world. Each Age—named Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood—requires the user to solve a series of logical, interrelated puzzles to complete its exploration. Objects and information discovered in one Age may be required to solve puzzles in another Age, or to complete the game's primary puzzle on Myst. For example, in order to activate a switch, players must first open a safe and use the matches found within to start a boiler.
Apart from its predominantly nonverbal storytelling, Mysts gameplay is unusual among adventuring computer games in several ways. The player is provided with very little backstory at the beginning of the game, and no obvious goals or objectives are laid out. This means that players must simply begin to explore. There are no obvious enemies, no physical violence
Nonviolent video game
Nonviolent video games are video games characterized by little or no violence. The term "nonviolent" as applied to video games is objectively ambiguous as virtually any game with conflict contains violence in some form, however minor. The apparent vagueness of the term is resolved by examining the...
, and no threat of "dying" at any point, although it is possible to reach a few "losing" endings. There is no time limit to complete the game. The game unfolds at its own pace and is solved through a combination of patience, observation, and logical thinking.
Plot
The game's instruction manual explains that an unnamed person known as the Stranger stumbles across an unusual book titled "Myst". The Stranger reads the book and discovers a detailed description of an island world called Myst. Placing his hand on the last page, the Stranger is whisked away to the world described, and is left with no choice but to explore the island. Myst contains a library where two additional books can be found, colored red and blue. These books are traps which hold Sirrus and Achenar, the sons of Atrus, who lives on Myst island with his wife Catherine. Atrus writes special "linking books" that transport people to the worlds, or "Ages", that the books describe. From the panels of their books, Sirrus and Achenar tell the Stranger that Atrus is dead, each claiming that the other brother murdered him, and plead for the Stranger to help them escape. However, the books are missing several pages, so the sons' messages are at first unclear, and riddled with static.As the Stranger continues to explore the island, more books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The Stranger must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the Stranger adds more pages to these books, the brothers can speak more and more clearly. Each brother maintains that the other brother cannot be trusted. After collecting four pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the Stranger where the fifth page is hidden. If the Stranger gives either brother their fifth page, they will be free. The Stranger is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.
Both brothers beg the Stranger not to touch the green book that is stored in the same location as their last pages. They claim that it is a book like their own that will trap the Stranger. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where Atrus is imprisoned. When the book is opened, Atrus asks the Stranger to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island; without it, he cannot bring his sons to justice. The game has several endings, depending on the player's actions. Giving either Sirrus or Achenar the final page of their book causes the Stranger to switch places with the son, leaving the player trapped inside the Prison book. Linking to D'ni without the page Atrus asks for leaves the Stranger and Atrus trapped on D'ni. Linking to D'ni with the page allows Atrus to complete his Myst book and return to the island. Upon returning to the library, the player finds the red and blue books gone, and burn marks on the shelves where they used to be.
Development
The Myst creative team consisted of the brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, with help from sound designer Chris Brandkamp, 3D artist and animator, Chuck Carter, Richard Watson, Bonnie McDowall, and Ryan MillerRyan Miller (author)
Ryan Miller is a writer who worked as a design director for the computer game company Cyan Worlds, founded by his brothers Rand and Robyn Miller. Ryan is credited with writing the initial draft of the Book of Atrus for Myst...
, who together made up Cyan, Inc.
Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds, Inc. is a video game development company, founded by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, and best known as the creators of the Myst series. After Myst and its sequel Riven sold several million copies each, Cyan went on to create the massively multiplayer online adventure, Uru,...
The company had previously only made children's games. Myst was conceived by the brothers as a challenging but aesthetically simple game that would appeal to adults; Myst was not only the largest collaboration Cyan had attempted at the time, but also took the longest to develop. According to Rand Miller, the brothers spent months solely designing the look and puzzles of the Ages, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" made for children. According to the creators, the game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island
The Mysterious Island
The Mysterious Island is a novel by Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, published by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel is a sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, though thematically it is...
by Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
.
At first, the developers had no idea how they would actually create the physical terrain for the Ages. Eventually, they created grayscale heightmap
Heightmap
In computer graphics, a heightmap or heightfield is a raster image used to store values, such as surface elevation data, for display in 3D computer graphics...
s, extruding them to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap which was wrapped over the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design. Rand noted that attention to detail allowed Myst to deal with the limitations of CD-ROM drives and graphics, stating "A lot can be done with texture…Like finding an interesting texture you can map into the tapestry on the wall, spending a little extra time to actually put the bumps on the tapestry, putting screws in things. These are the things you don't necessarily notice, but if they weren't there, would flag to your subconscious that this is fake."
The game was created on Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computers, principally Macintosh Quadra
Macintosh Quadra
The Macintosh Quadra series was Apple Computer's product family of professional high-end Apple Macintosh personal computers built using the Motorola 68040 CPU. The first two models in the Quadra line were introduced in 1991, and the name was used until the Power Mac was introduced in 1994...
s. The graphics were individual shots of fully rendered rooms. Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore. Each scene was modeled and rendered in StrataVision 3D
StrataVision 3D
StrataVision 3D was a comprehensive 3D computer graphics software package by Strata. Features include primitives-based modeling with texturising, keyframe animation, raytrace and later radiosity rendering....
, with some additional modeling in Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
MacroModel. The images were then edited and enhanced using Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
1.0.
The original Macintosh version of Myst was constructed in HyperCard
HyperCard
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
. Each Age was a unique HyperCard
HyperCard
HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
stack. Navigation was handled by the internal button system and HyperTalk
HyperTalk
HyperTalk is a high-level, procedural programming language created in 1987 by Dan Winkler and used in conjunction with Apple Computer's HyperCard hypermedia program by Bill Atkinson. The main target audience of HyperTalk was beginning programmers, hence HyperTalk programmers were usually called...
scripts, with image and QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
movie display passed off to various plugins; essentially, Myst functions as a series of separate multimedia slides linked together by commands. As the main technical constraint that impacted Myst was slow CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drive read speeds, Cyan had to go to great lengths to make sure all the game elements loaded as quickly as possible. Images were stored as 8-bit PICT
PICT
PICT is a graphics file format introduced on the original Apple Macintosh computer as its standard metafile format. It allows the interchange of graphics , and some limited text support, between Mac applications, and was the native graphics format of QuickDraw.The original version, PICT 1, was...
resources with custom color palettes and QuickTime still image compression. Animated elements such as movies and object animations were encoded as QuickTime movies with Cinepak
Cinepak
Cinepak is a video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. It was designed to encode 320x240 resolution video at 1x CD-ROM transfer rates. The codec was ported to the...
compression; in total, there were more than 66 minutes of Quicktime animation. This careful processing made the finished graphics look like truecolor images despite their low bit depth; the stills were reduced in size from 500 KB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
to around 80 KB.
Audio
Chris Brandkamp produced most of the ambientAmbient noise level
In atmospheric sounding and noise pollution, ambient noise level is the background sound pressure level at a given location, normally specified as a reference level to study a new intrusive sound source.Ambient sound levels are often measured in order to map sound conditions over a...
and incidental sounds in the game. To make sure the sounds fit, Brandkamp had to wait until the game's visuals were placed in context. Sound effects were drawn from unlikely sources; the noise of a fire in a boiler was created by driving slowly over stones in a driveway, because recordings of actual fire did not sound like fire burning. The chimes of a large clock tower were simulated using a wrench, then transposed to a lower pitch.
At first, Myst had no music, because the Millers did not want music to interfere with the gameplay. After a few tests, they realized that the background music did not adversely affect the game and, in fact, "seemed to really help the mood of certain places that you were at in the game." Robyn Miller ended up composing 40 minutes of synthesized
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
music that was used in the game and later published as Myst: The Soundtrack. Initially, Cyan released the soundtrack via a mail-order service, but before the release of Mysts sequel, Riven
Riven
Riven is a puzzle adventure game and the sequel to Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Brøderbund. Riven was distributed on five compact discs and released on October 29, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM, with improved audio and a...
, Virgin Records
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
acquired the rights to release the soundtrack, and the CD was rereleased on April 21, 1998.
Reception
Myst was commercially successful on release. Along with The 7th GuestThe 7th Guest
The 7th Guest, produced by Trilobyte and released by Virgin Games in 1993, is an FMV-based puzzle video game. It was one of the first computer video games to be released only on CD-ROM. The 7th Guest is a horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac...
, it was widely regarded as a killer application
Killer application
A killer application , in the jargon of marketing teams, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system...
that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. The game's success also led to a number of games which sought to copy Mysts success, referred to as "Myst clones". Myst was the bestselling PC game throughout the 1990s, until The Sims
The Sims
The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. Its development was led by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity...
exceeded its sales in 2002. The PC version of Myst holds an average score of 90% at GameRankings based on six reviews, although the subsequent remakes of the game and the console ports have generally received lower average scores. Mysts success baffled some who wondered how a game some saw as "little more than 'an interactive slide show'" turned out to be a hit.
Myst was generally praised by critics. Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
suggested that Myst was evidence that video games could in fact evolve into an art form. Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
reported that some players considered Mysts "virtual morality" a religious experience. Aarhus University professor Søren Pold pointed to Myst as an excellent example of how stories can be told using objects rather than people. Laura Evenson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, pointed to adult-oriented games like Myst as evidence the video game industry was emerging from its "adolescent" phase.
GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
's Jeff Sengstack wrote that "Myst is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let you go." Writing about Mysts reception, Greg M. Smith noted that Myst had become a hit and was regarded as incredibly immersive despite most closely resembling "the hoary technology of the slideshow
Slideshow
A slide show is a display of a series of chosen information or pictures, done for artistic or instructional purposes. Slide shows are conducted by a presenter using an apparatus, such as a carousel slide projector, an overhead projector or in more recent years, a computer running presentation...
(with accompanying music and effects)". Smith concluded that "Mysts primary brilliance lies in the way it provides narrative justification for the very things that are most annoying" about the technological constraints imposed on the game; for instance, Macworld
Macworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...
praised Mysts designers for overcoming the occasionally debilitating slowness of CD drives to deliver a consistent experience throughout the game. The publication went on to declare Myst the best game of 1994, stating that Myst removed the "most annoying parts of adventure games — vocabularies that [you] don't understand, people you can't talk to, wrong moves that get you killed and make you start over. You try to unravel the enigma of the island by exploring the island, but there's no time pressure to distract you, no arbitrary punishments put in your way".
Some aspects of the game still received criticism. Several publications did not agree with the positive reception of the story; Jeremy Parrish of 1UP.com
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
noted that while Mysts lack of interaction and continual plot suited the game, it helped usher in the death of the adventure game genre. Edge
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
stated the main flaw with the game was that the game engine was nowhere near as sophisticated as the graphics. Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers
Adventure Gamers
Adventure Gamers is a computer game website created in 1998 dedicated to the genre of adventure games. It publishes reviews and previews of adventure games, as well as opinion articles and interviews with game designers....
noted a few critics complained about the difficulty and lack of context of the puzzles, while others believed these elements added to the gameplay. Similarly, critics were split on whether the lack of a plot the player could actually change was a good or bad element. In a 2000 retrospective review, IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
declared that Myst had not aged well and that playing it "was like watching hit TV shows from the 70s. 'People watched that?,' you wonder in horror."
Legacy
In addition to the numerous remakes and ports of the game, Mysts success led to several sequels. RivenRiven
Riven is a puzzle adventure game and the sequel to Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Brøderbund. Riven was distributed on five compact discs and released on October 29, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM, with improved audio and a...
was released on October 29, 1997, in which Atrus asks the Stranger to return to help him rescue his wife from Gehn. Myst III: Exile
Myst III: Exile
Myst III: Exile is the third title in the Myst series of first person adventure video games. While the preceding games in the series, Myst and Riven, were produced by Cyan and published by Brøderbund, Exile was developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft...
was released simultaneously for Macintosh and Windows systems in North America on May 7, 2001, and was later ported to the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
and Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
consoles. Exile was not developed by Cyan; Presto Studios
Presto Studios
Presto Studios was a computer game development company of the 1990s, especially famous for its award-winning The Journeyman Project series and the 2001 sequel to Cyan's hit Myst series, Myst III: Exile....
developed the title and Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
published it. Taking place 10 years after the events of Riven, Exile reveals the reasons for Atrus' sons being imprisoned and the disastrous effects their greed caused. The fourth entry in the series, Myst IV: Revelation
Myst IV: Revelation
Myst IV: Revelation is the fourth installment in the Myst computer game series, developed and published by Ubisoft. Revelation was the first game in the series released exclusively on a DVD-ROM format; a multiple CD-ROM version was not produced as it would have taken twelve compact discs to fit all...
, was released on September 10, 2004, and was developed and published entirely by Ubisoft. The music was composed by Jack Wall
Jack Wall (composer)
Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over 20 games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect...
with assistance from Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
. The final game in the Myst saga was Myst V: End of Ages
Myst V: End of Ages
Myst V: End of Ages is a 2005 adventure video game, and the fifth and final installment in the Myst series. The game was developed by Cyan Worlds, published by Ubisoft, and released for Macintosh and Windows PC platforms on September 20, 2005...
, developed by Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds
Cyan Worlds, Inc. is a video game development company, founded by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, and best known as the creators of the Myst series. After Myst and its sequel Riven sold several million copies each, Cyan went on to create the massively multiplayer online adventure, Uru,...
and released on September 19, 2005.
In addition to the main Myst saga
Saga
Sagas, are stories in Old Norse about ancient Scandinavian and Germanic history, etc.Saga may also refer to:Business*Saga DAB radio, a British radio station*Saga Airlines, a Turkish airline*Saga Falabella, a department store chain in Peru...
, Cyan developed Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is an adventure video game developed by Cyan Worlds and published by Ubisoft. Released in 2003, the title is the fourth game in the Myst canon. Departing from previous games of the franchise, Uru takes place in the modern era and allows players to customize their onscreen...
, which was released on November 14, 2003. Uru allows players to customize their avatars
Avatar (computing)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
, and renders graphics in real-time. The multiplayer component of Uru was initially cancelled, but GameTap
GameTap
GameTap is an American online video game service established by Turner Broadcasting System . Dubbed by TBS as a "first of its kind broadband gaming network", the service provides users with classic arcade video games and game-related video content...
eventually revived it as Myst Online: Uru Live
Myst Online: Uru Live
Myst Online: Uru Live is an open source massively multiplayer online adventure game developed by Cyan Worlds. The game is the multiplayer component to the 2003 video game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. Like Uru, Myst Online takes place in 2000's New Mexico, where an ancient civilization known as the D'ni...
on February 15, 2007. On February 4, 2008, GameTap Creative Director Ricardo Sanchez announced that the game was cancelled, and that the servers would be shut down 60 days after the announcement. The game has since been brought back up again and is free to play. The Miller brothers collaborated with David Wingrove
David Wingrove
David Wingrove is a British science fiction writer. He is well-known as the author of the Chung Kuo novels . He is also the co-author of the three Myst novels....
and wrote several novels based on the Myst universe, which were published by Hyperion. The novels, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni, fill in the games' backstory and were packaged together as The Myst Reader
The Myst Reader
The Myst Reader is a bound collection of three books in the Myst franchise, and was published on September 1, 2004. The collection combines three works previously published as separate novels: The Book of Atrus , The Book of Tiana , and The Book of Dni...
.
By 2003, the Myst franchise
Myst (series)
Myst is a franchise centered on a series of adventure video games. The first game in the series, Myst, was released in 1993 by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller and their video game company Cyan, Inc...
had sold over 12 million copies worldwide, with Myst representing more than six million copies in the figure. The game's popularity has led to several mentions in popular culture. References to Myst made appearances in an episode of the The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
("Treehouse of Horror VI
Treehouse of Horror VI
"Treehouse of Horror VI" is the sixth episode of The Simpsons seventh season and the sixth episode in the Treehouse of Horror series. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 29, 1995, and contains three self-contained segments...
"), and Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
wanted The Bourne Conspiracy video game
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy is a third-person espionage video game developed by High Moon Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game expands upon Robert Ludlum's character Jason Bourne, and immerses the player in a cat and mouse style...
to be a puzzle game like Myst, refusing to lend his voice talent to the game when it was turned into a shooter instead. Myst has also been used for educational and scientific purposes; Becta
Becta
Becta was a non-departmental public body ] funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, in the UK It was a charity and a company limited by guarantee. In the post-election spending review in May 2010, it was announced that Becta was to be abolished...
recognized a primary school teacher, Tim Rylands, who had made literacy gains using Myst as a teaching tool, and researchers have used the game for studies examining the effect of video games on aggression.
A parody computer game, Pyst
Pyst
Pyst is a computer game published in 1996. It was created as a parody of the highly successful adventure game, Myst. The parody features full motion video of John Goodman as "King Mattruss", the ruler of "Pyst Island". Pyst was written by Peter Bergman, a co-founder of the Firesign Theatre, and...
, was released in 1996.
Rereleases and ports
Mysts success led to the game being ported to multiple platforms, including the SaturnSega Saturn
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console that was first released by Sega on November 22, 1994 in Japan, May 11, 1995 in North America, and July 8, 1995 in Europe...
, PlayStation, Jaguar CD
Atari Jaguar CD
The Atari Jaguar CD or Jag CD is a CD-ROM peripheral for the Atari Jaguar video game console.Late in the life span of the company, Atari released this long-promised CD-ROM unit. The unit hit shelves on September 11, 1995 and retailed for $149.95. The device sat atop the Jaguar console, snapping...
, AmigaOS
AmigaOS
AmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
, CD-i
CD-i
CD-i, or Compact Disc Interactive, is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N.V. CD-i also refers to the multimedia Compact Disc standard used by the CD-i console, also known as Green Book, which was developed by Philips and Sony...
, and 3DO
3DO Interactive Multiplayer
The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer is a video game console originally produced by Panasonic in 1993. Further renditions of the hardware were released in 1994 by Sanyo and Goldstar. The consoles were manufactured according to specifications created by The 3DO Company, and were originally designed by...
consoles. The video game was also remade or ported to next-generation consoles and handhelds, as well as rereleased in new editions for the PC.
PC remakes
Myst: Masterpiece Edition was an updated version of the original Myst, released in May 2000. It featured several improvements over the original game, with the images re-rendered in 24-bit truecolor instead of the original Mysts 8-bit color. The score was re-mastered and sound effects were enhanced, and some cinematics were redone.realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a remake of Myst released in November 2000 for Windows PCs, and in January 2002 for Mac. Unlike Myst and the Masterpiece Edition, realMyst featured free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics instead of pre-rendered stills. Weather effects like thunderstorms, sunsets, and sunrises were added to the Ages, and minor additions were made to keep the game in sync with the story of the Myst novels and sequels. The game also added a new Age called Rime, which is featured in an extended ending. realMyst was developed by Cyan, Inc. and Sunsoft, and published by Ubisoft
Ubisoft
Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. is a major French video game publisher and developer, with headquarters in Montreuil, France. The company has a worldwide presence with 25 studios in 17 countries and subsidiaries in 26 countries....
. While the new interactivity of the game was praised, realMyst ran extremely slowly on most computers of the time. Robyn Miller expressed frustration with realMyst, saying: "I only saw realMyst after it was released. As a remake, it was a lapse of reason and directionless; overt merchandising of the original Myst. It definitely wasn't how we originally envisioned Myst, as was promoted."
Handhelds
In November 2005, Midway GamesMidway Games
Midway Games, Inc. is an American company that was formerly a major video game publisher. Following a bankruptcy filing in 2009, it is no longer active and is in the process of liquidating all of its assets. Midway's titles included Mortal Kombat, Ms.Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Tron, Rampage, the...
announced that they would be developing a remake of Myst for the PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
. The remake would include additional content that was not featured in the original Myst, including the Rime age that was earlier seen in realMyst. The game was released in Japan and Europe in 2006, and the US version was released in 2008.
A version of Myst for the Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
was also released in December 2007. The version features re-mastered video and audio, using source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
specifically re-written for the Nintendo DS. The remake features Rime as a playable Age, with an all new graphic set. Myst DS was released in North America on May 13, 2008, and later reissued by Storm City Games. The title was heavily panned by the gaming press, with an aggregate score of 43/100 on Metacritic.
In February 2005, Cyan and Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software
Mean Hamster Software, Inc. is a video game developer founded by John Swiderski in 1985. Mean Hamster Software created several games for the Atari 5200 from 1999-2004. They then created Myst for Windows Mobile in 2005, and after the release of Riven: The Sequel to Myst for Pocket PC in 2006, Mean...
released Myst for the Microsoft Pocket PC
Pocket PC
A Pocket PC is also known by Microsoft as a 'Windows Mobile Classic device'. It is a hardware specification for a handheld-sized computer, personal digital assistant , that runs the Microsoft 'Windows Mobile Classic' operating system...
platform; Riven
Riven
Riven is a puzzle adventure game and the sequel to Myst. Developed by Cyan Worlds, it was initially published by Brøderbund. Riven was distributed on five compact discs and released on October 29, 1997, in North America; it was later released on a single DVD-ROM, with improved audio and a...
was ported shortly after. In August 2008, Cyan announced that the company was developing a version of Myst for Apple's iOS. Cyan confirmed that the project was near completion in April 2009, submitting the title to Apple on April 22. The game was made available to download from the iTunes App Store on May 2, 2009. The original download size was 727 MB, which was considered very large by iPhone standards.
External links
- Myst on Cyan WorldsCyan WorldsCyan Worlds, Inc. is a video game development company, founded by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, and best known as the creators of the Myst series. After Myst and its sequel Riven sold several million copies each, Cyan went on to create the massively multiplayer online adventure, Uru,...
website - Myst (for iPhone) website