What is Myst?

MYST is an immersive, first-person adventure game of the point-and-click type. It features high-quality graphics and sound and a variety of puzzles and challenges. The player is, essentially, a stranger dropped into an unfamiliar world in which clues, writings and functional-but-disabled machines and devices point the way to realizing the storyline. The game presents the player with non-linear gameplay (you can wander around at your whim), puzzles and dilemmas requiring both logical and intuitive thought and presents the player with ethical choices that affect the outcome of the game. The best selling computer adventure game for over 9 years (1993 to 2002), it s a still a thoroughly enjoyable experience a quarter of a century later.

This is one of the first (and best in its day) of the point-and-click adventure games. It established a new genre of adenture games for computers and set a standard for interactivity that has spawned both sequels and many imitators (called myst-clones"). It was a commercial success from the day it went on sale and was the best-selling adventure-genre computer game from its release in 1993 until 2002 when it was overtaken, in sales, by The Sims. It was also the first game to fully exploit CD-ROM technology and established techniques for effectively managing game content on CD that would be used in thousands of games from then on. It was also pioneering in that it allowed the player to wander freely (non-linear gameplay) and presented the user with ethical choices which created alternative endings to the game. It was also the first to incorporate high-quality graphics with ambient sounds and effects, creating the most immersive environment possible at the time. This game set a pattern for many similar games which followed; that of a player who is essentially a stranger, dropped into a game world, who is presented with puzzles and problems whose solutions are integral to the unraveling of the storyline. Gameplay was remarkably smooth, for that time, as CD-ROM speeds were quite limited. At that time, CD-ROM drives were not a standard system amenity; they were expensive and slow and were just emerging as an important system component. MYST is widely credited with stimulating the sales of CD-ROM drives. MYST started out as a set of HyperCard stacks linked together with commands activated by hot zones in the cards. It was developed on Mac Quadras. It was also one of the first games (If not THE first) to have music engaging enough to be commercially-released on CD as a soundtrack.

Since MYST was produced at a time when system resources were quite modest in comparison with our own day and is accordingly sparing in its use of resources, it can play smoothly on any system that can run the game. Graphics are rich in quality and gameplay is straightforward. Clues and game elements are scattered throughout the gameworld, so a notebook and pencil are handy during gameplay. The game has a 'zip' mode for fast travel between discovered locations to prevent tedium, as the player may visit the same location many times. The puzzles are clever and engaging, involving both logic and intutive thought. It is, of course, primitive compared to games of the present day but a very enjoyable experience, even now.

Download Myst for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• 2.5 MB RAM available
• 8-bit color display
• CD-ROM drive
• System 7.0.1

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This game plays well in the Sheepshaver (v. 2.4) emulation environment. I am playing with a Mac Pro (6-core/Westmere) and OSX 10.10.5 (Yosemite) using a virtual disc in Sheepshaver that holds a Toast image of the MYST CD. The game plays well, as mentioned, however my experience has been that movie play within the game suffers when in the 256-color mode that the game prompts the player to switch to at launch. I found that the opening videos and some other clips played but displayed only black when in 256-color mode. Choosing 'Continue' at the display-setting prompt (and thus declining the switch to 8-bit color) resulted in smooth, always-visible movie play.

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver