Myst è un cimelio storico, non solo per il suo impatto sul mercato videoludico, essendo divenuto uno dei primi "best-seller" per PC con 10 milioni di copie vendute, ma anche per la sua influenza creativa senza confini, riuscendo a toccare anche il mondo della televisione per quanto riguarda la serie "Lost".
Molti aspetti dell'immaginario fantasy o esplorativo odierno derivano da questo gioco e tanto basta per sentire la necessità di provarlo almeno una volta nella propria vita.

La fantasia, l'immaginazione, il potere della creatività da difendere a tutti i costi dal pensiero forzato e manipolatorio, questi sono i temi cruciali, oggi più che mai attuali, affrontati in questa affascinante avventura nella misteriosa isola di Myst, in cui le parole scritte diventano realtà e l'inchiostro diventa sangue.
Inizialmente può sembrare complesso e di difficile comprensione, ma in seguito ad un'esplorazione più approfondita, dopo essersi presi il dovuto tempo per riflettere, tutto diverrà più chiaro e la progressione più lineare... e questo purtroppo rappresenta un problema per gli appassionati del genere, che non troveranno il proverbiale "pane per i loro denti" proprio quando la storia giungerà al suo climax. Interessante e comoda, tuttavia, la funzione "zip", che permette al giocatore di teletrasportarsi in zone di interesse già visitate in precedenza, a patto che esse siano visibili dal punto in cui ci si trova.

Nel gioco sono presenti pochi dialoghi, tutti doppiati e recitati da attori reali in maniera ottimale, sia in lingua originale che in italiano. Il design dei suoni è convincente e ben strutturato, ma la colonna sonora originale stona un po' con le atmosfere fiabesche dell'opera, risultando talvolta confusionaria talvolta fastidiosa e fuori luogo. Fortunatamente può essere disabilitata in qualsiasi momento.

Esteticamente, inoltre, riesce tutt'oggi a fare la sua bella figura, al netto di qualche animazione un po' "antiquata".

Al di là di tutto, che possa piacere o no, l'esperienza di Myst è unica nel suo genere e, indipendentemente dai gusti personali, non potrà fare a meno di lasciare un ricordo indelebile nella mente dei giocatori.
Perciò giocateci, se possibile alla versione originale del 1993 su una macchina virtuale come ScummVM (ovviamente solo dopo aver acquistato il CD originale).

If you want to talk to me about games, I consider playing all the way through Myst to be the bare minimum requirement for us to even begin to be speaking on the same wavelengths. It's the first puzzle on my mysterious island of intricate riddles.

It's very rare in games for the first pioneer at the gate to truly nail it in one go, but Myst blew everyone's balls off in '93 for the same reason it still blows peoples' balls off today and has like 35 new variants that all just change the way you walk around the worlds, because the worlds themselves are an absolute masterclass in puzzle and level design and artistry.

There's really nothing I can say about Myst as a review that hasn't been said a thousand times before, it is such a fundamental piece of my gaming thought process that even the things I could say are things that would simply emerge in my thoughts about nearly every other game I talk about. It still holds up to this day and, again, has been remastered and remade in so many formats, including ones that just have a big huge "HINT" button to let you beat Myst the same way you beat the Hardest computer at Chess, so there's no excuse to skip on it.

Also don't give those fucking guys any of the pages. Come on.

[review from 2022] The first time I came across this game was on GOG when they were having a sale on some of the old games, including the Myst series. I was curious about what it was about but never gotten interested in the series until I watch a video from Adumplaze and wanted to play it myself. This is a game that requires a LOT of patience. The puzzles are certainly not easy to figure out, but once you’re able to solve it and get the hang of it, it is extremely rewarding. There were a few times where I got stuck in two of the worlds (or Ages as they’re called) and had to resort to looking up what to do from a walkthrough. There’s no doubt that a lot of passion when into not only the environments for Age and each puzzle, but also the world of Myst and its characters. I would recommend playing this game as your first entry to the series, although I think any of the later tiles in the series, like Riven or Myst 3, would be a better starting point than the first game since they improve on a lot of things over Myst 1. Also, if you were to play Myst 1, I would probably recommend the realMyst version over the original Myst, although I haven’t played that version yet to compare the two versions of Myst 1. Anyway, realMyst replaces the slideshow screenshots from the original version with a 3D world to explore, and might be a better experience for you despite the recent Masterpiece edition of realMyst that changed the original graphics with more “modern” and “realistic” graphics for the 3D world. I haven’t played the sequels yet, but I definitely look forward to trying them out when I get the chance.

Myst is an interesting cultural object that might be a little odd to visit for the first time today. My experience with it was quite positive given the intervening time, despite occasional frustrations.

I think the most striking thing about Myst today is the effectiveness of its pacing and world design. While the actual acting performances are over-the-top, the mechanism of gating the worlds behind journals and puzzles develops an excellent sense of mystery and curiosity.

Reading the journals for the various ages to which you can travel instills a sense of familiarity and anticipation to actually traveling to them. Arriving at an age was exciting, because it meant seeing something in person that you'd only read about, but also an encouraging sense of understanding as you recognize details based on what you've read.

There are a few occasions where it's near impossible to see a particular detail that you must interact with, or to find a path you can travel down in order to get where you need to go. I definitely encourage players to seek out clues or solutions online if they're stuck (I certainly had to a few times). Besides a few of these (probably unintentional) cheap shots, the widely available Masterpiece edition is very playable and very engaging for a sufficiently patient modern player.

Also played on DS years later, but this one hits home, used to play with my dad, he kept his copy from before I was born, it was fun to revisit his notes in the Journal that the game used to come with. Once my mom bought me Myst 3 on Xbox cuz she remembered the game, but we didn't have an Xbox in our house so it was always a fun "wonder what that game was like" for years after, too. Just lots of fun memories around this one, so it gets that perfect rating, but I can understand that it's a little slow and esoteric for a lot of people who just want a game to be a fun button masher or fun interactive story.

that FORWARD/BACKTRACK train maze has got to be one of the most vile GAME LENGTHENER adventure game moments I've ever seen!!!!!!

hard to keep motivation when all the basic attempts at interaction AND punishments for failure can squander MINUTES of your life to consecutive unskippable transition scenes or overly large and tricky to navigate fmv hellscapes! just ain't got the patience anymore, man....

classic aesthetic and sound design tho. the breadcrumb-y writing too! really, I was quite captivated and totally tolerating the game's oldschool clunkiness until idk I just couldn't take it anymore. shame..

respect your elders??? i POMPOUSLY acknowledge their EXISTENCE at least~

absolutely gorgeous early 3D time capsule with a really interesting world. i like myst for its atmosphere and emptiness, which is something i feel the sequels kinda got wrong. myst appeals to me because it just feels like it's me wandering around this weird ass island alone, trying to solve puzzles. interactions with other characters were very sparse, which really helped to build this atmosphere. the later games in the myst series tried adding more characters to talk to, which kind of broke this atmosphere to me, and i didn't really enjoy them as much. that being said, the original myst is absolutely worth your time

US Saturn Release #008 - Myst

Played on a real American Sega Saturn with the Fenrir ODE

Myst knows how to truly immerse you quickly and efficiently. Even if you have a hard time getting into the puzzles and the general game loop, I think you'll appreciate how it feels.

On those puzzles though, they really vary in fun factor. Some of them are really easy, some are tricky nut actually fun to do and make you feel smart for accomplishing, and others make you drag out the ol' notebook. That's not necessarily bad but I wasn't exactly expecting it so I wasn't too happy about it.

This is a game you really need to play with the shuttle mouse (or on emulator with your regular PC mouse). Playing with the controller is just kind of slow and annoying for the most part, really draggin stuff out making you not want to go through some puzzles the intended way just due to how much playing with controller tanks it.

So I guess overall, Myst is an ok game for the Saturn, though, I don't really know why you would play this on Saturn and not on PC.

6/10

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/a-look-back-at-myst-1993/

With so much time passing since it’s release, it’s hard to get across just how big Myst was back in 1993. It became the highest selling video game at the the time, selling over 3 million copies world wide, and was only surpassed by the original Sims 9 years later in 2002. And while the series has unfortunately gone to the wayside since it’s original game, it still has a place in gaming history.

When Myst was first released, it was so popular that it was the thing that finally got people to move on from the old 3 and a half inch Floppy Disks, which contained a meager 1.44 megabytes, to the then brand new format of CDs, which contained up to 700 megabytes on a single disc, hundreds of times bigger than what a Floppy Disk could ever hope to achieve, and Myst was the flagship title that really showed off what that extra space could do. High quality music, better looking graphics, characters being able to have voice acting that gave the characters more of a personality, and it even allowed for videos.

The version of Myst that I’ll be checking out is Myst: Masterpiece Edition because it’s the version that is the most widely available version of the game. It’s a remastered and updated version of the original game that came out 7 years after the release of the original version with remastered graphics and sound. Plus there isn’t any real reason to go back to the original version beyond nostalgia, curiosity, or if your a mega Myst fan.

In Myst, you play as “The Stranger”, a nameless person who is a stand in for anyone playing the game, who comes across a book with the word MYST on it’s cover. After reading through the book, which describes a fantastical island, you come across the final page, which, to your surprise and confusion, contains a moving picture of the island that was described in the book.

After touching the image, you find yourself being teleported to the island. Now stuck there, you have no choice other than to explore the island. Located in the center of the island is a library that contains shelves of mostly burned books, which a few have survived and contain a brief history of the island, along with two other shelves containing one book each, a Red Book and a Blue Book.

When opening these books, you come to find that each has someone trapped inside them. Sirrus, who is stuck in the Red Book, and Achenar, who is stuck in the Blue Book. Both tell you to not trust the other one and to find the corresponding missing colored pages from their books and to bring them back to them. And this is where the game picks up.

You’re not only left to explore the island, but across the island are similar books to the one you originally came across called MYST, called “Ages”, in which colored pages are located. To gain access to each Age, you have to solve a puzzle to get to the book linking to that Age. Hints to these puzzles are not only located in the few normal books that survived being burned in the library in the middle of the island.

Myst is a first person point-and-click adventure game and it’s gameplay is about as basic as you would expect from a game likes. You point and click on certain parts of the screen to make your way through each location. It can be more accurately be described as interactivity than gameplay. There are a few spots that are a little confusing to navigate because it places you a direction that doesn’t always do a good job of setting up where you can and can’t go, but it’s few and far between. The game also comes with a feature called ‘Zip Mode’, which lets you quickly move around whatever location you’re in by hovering over where you’ve previously big and pressing a hot spot on the screen that’s indicated with the cursor changing from a hand to a lightening bolt. It can come in handy for those who don’t have the patience to click through each screen.

You can complete each Age in whatever order you want, who is both a burden and a blessing, which I’ll get into in a minute. You can read up on each Age in the previously mentioned library on Myst Island, so you don’t have to go into each new location blind.

But despite the fact that Myst is so simple in it’s gameplay and concept, it’s execution is where it starts to waver a bit. For starters, you can’t pick up both the Red Page and Blue Page at the same time. I don’t know if this was a deliberate design decision or a limitation of the software and/or hardware, but it effectively means you have to ‘complete’ each Age twice to get both pages to see what both Sirrus and Achenar have to say. Thankfully the game seems to leave all of the puzzles how you left them from when you played through each Age, so replaying them isn’t too bad.

A few of the Ages are easy to get through on a second play. The Channelwood Age (The one with all the trees) isn’t too bad since it’s just flipping a couple of switches and you’re back out of the Age in less than 2 minutes with the second page, but other Ages are a lot more aggravating. Thankfully, Myst also places you right back at the beginning of whatever Age you play no matter how many times you’ve played it before, which means that you can just skip replaying some puzzles, which helps speed the process along.

There are also a few other minor problems that scattered throughout the game, such as the telescope in the Stoneship Age (the one on the boat) being a bit finicky because in order to move it around you have to drag the screen to the left or right and there were a few times that I rushed and I accidentally clicked away from it a few times.

But the low point of the game for me is the Selenitic Age (the one with the rocket ship). A portion of The Selenitic Age has you playing through a maze. And for the players who might have picked this as their first Age to try and complete probably weren’t expecting to have to revisit locations on their first play through, resulting in some people not having mapped it out or not have it memorized. Unless you were one of the few who actually thought to map it out first time around, it just becomes a tedious slog. Having yo navigate a maze through sound cues sounds is a neat idea, but there has never been a good maze, even in the best of games.

It does actually fit with the rest of the Age, with there being noises for clues on how to get through the maze. It is telegraphed with sounds from the Mechanical Age, but I doubt most people would even notice after hours of playing the first time around, or even on a replay, and it was one of the rare times that I had to look up a guide for a game. I wasn’t going to spend hours of my life to grind out the maze or try to map it out, and I know it wasn’t just me because when I look up reactions to this game, it’s the only section for the game that other people used a guide for.

So the game does help guide you through the maze, but because mazes suck even in the best of games, it was still the worst section of a pretty enjoyable experience.

Myst: Masterpiece Edition also added a general map for whatever location you’re in that highlights anything that you need to pay attention to, which is great for those who are struggling to remember whats located where.

Myst was not the first game to make use of pre-rendered CGI stills for it’s graphics, with games such as ‘Alice: An Interactive Museum’ (1991) and ‘L-Zone’ (1992) coming out the previous years, and ‘The Journeyman Project’ (1993) and ‘Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure’ (1993) coming out the same year. But unlike those games, which go for more complex CGI and distinct art styles, Myst instead goes for both a more simplistic art style and more basic with it’s CGI. I’m pretty sure this was due to Myst having a smaller team size that reigned in the scope a bit, but it ends up working in Myst’s favor. And that’s not to say that the other games from the same time period looked bad or aged worse.

Douglas Adams, author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and eventual writer of his own pre-rendered adventure game ‘Starship Titanic’, was quoted as calling Myst a “Beautiful Void”, naming the trope in the process, when the game originally came out and it’s easy to see why. Interactions with other characters are kept to a minimum and in very specific circumstances, so you’re entirely left to exploring places that empty and have even been abandoned, essentially creating something akin to the feeling of kenopsia, having an eclectic aura, or being a liminal space a few decades before those terms took off and giving it this really distinct feeling.

This was also around the same time that polygons were starting to finally take off more on home computers and consoles. 1993 also had games like the original Star Fox for the Super Nintendo, which was also graphically impressive, and the previous year had the likes of the original Alone in the Dark. But as impressive as they were, no game at the time was going to come even remotely close to showing off what Myst was doing in real time. So the trade off is that while it wasn’t running in real time, it did make the game look impressive in other ways.

It looked so good that Cyan, Inc. released a screensaver with screens from the game, which was back when screensavers were a thing because computers didn’t go into a standby mode that turned the screen off, preventing the image to be burned into the monitor. And this screensaver even has exclusive images that didn’t make it into the game along with behind the scenes content. It’s the equivalent of a company today releasing a 10 hour video onto their YouTube video that’s just game ambiance.

1993 even had ID Software’s Doom, but it wasn’t until 3 years later in 1996 with Quake that having games running smoothly with polygons in real time that it was even feasible for both developers and consumers to work with, so Myst’s graphics were making the best of a very limited situation in multiple ways.

And to add to the other worldly feeling of the game is the memorable soundtrack of the game. Done by Robyn Miller, one of the two brothers who founded Cyan, Inc, a lot of the tracks from the soundtrack adds to the ambiance of each location you’ll visit as well as add to some emptiness that some of the levels create. But it’s not a constant throughout the game, as there are times where it pulls back and lets you just take in the ambient noises of each location, which includes the wind blowing through the trees, water lapping up on the shore, and whatever wildlife resides in a location to walking through some empty caves or through the empty corridors of abandoned buildings.

Both the music and ambient soundscapes show just how alone you are in these locations. Don’t worry, it’s not as creepy as I’m making it sound.

If you want to track down a copy of this game, I would recommend getting the GOG version since it comes with a program called SCUMMVM that means you don’t have to fiddle with anything to get the game running on modern systems. Just boot it up and play.

The original Myst is from a unique period of time where the technology of video games were making giant leaps, which Myst help to make popular. It might be a little rough around the edges compared to more modern games and somewhat limited by the technology of the time, but it’s an enjoyable little adventure game that clearly has the markings of a small team who had some big ideas.

Due to the previously mentioned success, Myst managed to become a franchise, with multiple sequels, remakes, and spin-offs, along with a book series, a comic series that was cancelled half way through its run, and a potential TV mini-series and movie projects that never seemed to get off the ground. After looking back at the original Myst, it’s pretty obvious that it was never really intended to be a franchise, but the developers took advantage of the success that they were given and ran with it.

It even spawned a trend of what were called “Myst Clones”, which all involved going through a series of pre-rendered images, or even worlds made up of photographs of actual locations or real-world sets, in a similar style to Myst. Adventure fans thought that Myst’s popularity would kill the adventure genre by making it “dumbed-down” and making the genre more accessible to more people, along with Doom, which came out the same year, which, according to adventure game fans at the time, required no thought at all to play. The irony is that Myst making it more accessible to people probably made it better because you didn’t have to deal with the genre’s non-stop use of awful logic for puzzles.

Considering that a lot of previous adventure games required brute forcing your way through a game, either because you could easily screw yourself over, wasting hours and even days of your life (I’m looking at you Sierra), or because it only made sense in the designers head and they didn’t take in consideration that that other people would be playing it, or both at the same time, both could mean that you could end up wasting tens of hours of time only to get frustrated and often confused, so a game that made logical sense was a warm welcome.

Myst was even popular enough for Disney to get in contact with Cyan to build a Myst themed island as Disneyland Florida, in which only a limited amount of people would have been allowed onto the island in any given day, with park goers having to figure out what happened to the islands last inhabitants over 11 acres of land, with the whole thing being non-linear, meaning that no two people would have had the same experience. But alas, that never came to be. But from the sounds of it, it probably would have had more success in the modern world of geo-caching and escape rooms.

The library from Myst Island even made it’s way onto an episode of The Simpsons, in the background of the ‘Homer3’ segment of ‘Treehouse of Horror VI’ along with a snippet of the soundtrack, which in turn was featured in the IMAX film Cyberworld 3D, which was the film used to promote the then new IMAX cinemas. Unfortunately, you can’t see the film anymore since it only gets used to test out new IMAX theater before they’re opened to the public.

Looking back at the original Myst, it’s quaint compared to other games that have come out since it’s release, not only on a technical level, with games being able to easily be rendered in real time that look much better than even some of the later Myst games, but with how adventure games are now designed to be more accessible roughly 30 years later (as of this look back at the original Myst), which the original Myst helped to some degree, even with it’s own series, with it’s sequels leaning from the mistakes made in the original.