Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).
The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.
“Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted 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 reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)
The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”
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(wikipedia)
Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?
You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!
To hear our full impression of Myst, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 77.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Bioshock arrived on the Xbox 360 almost August of 2007, about one year from this month. It’s set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 in October of 2008, over one year after the Xbox 360 version. Is it too late?
Welcome back guys, another good show.
I’m sorry I can never manage to send hate mail for Paul cause I’m just too busy sending it to Jonah. Just kidding, this is more “nerd rage mail”, because of the topic of Final Fantasy from previous episode.
Saying your not into FF because you’ve only played 10 and up is like saying you don’t like Star Wars because you’ve only seen the pre-quels. I’m sorry but as far as I am concerned you’ve only played the BAD Final Fantasy games. The Golden era of FF was parts 4, 5, & 6; 6 being my personal favorite. It had the best story, art, music of the entire series.
The thing about Final Fantasy was the first one was supposed to be the last and only but it had done so well they decided to continue, so the only thing final about them was that you only saw one world per game, you never went back so there wasn’t truly a sequel in the sense of a continuing world.
That changed after FF10,now even FF4 and 7 have sequels. FF6 was the last to have that 2d style art that I still love, ff7 had a real mix bag of art from beautiful backgrounds to horrendous 3d models. FF8 just had a terribly convoluted story and it felt too modern, FF9 I think was the last one that I really enjoyed but still missed and preferred the 2D art style over the still awkward 3D models. FF10 had unrelatable characters, it looked pretty but felt so shallow.
FF11 was the first MMO which I never played, FF12 was too easy to cheese with grinding out the chessboard skills. Just about everything is wrong with FF13, I know the bird in the dudes hair was wierd, but they did it in Suikoden V as well, maybe it’s a cultural thing. I couldn’t stand the dude with the beanie who constantly had a lock of hair in his face.
What was really obnoxious was the star rating they would give after each battle, after the first few I realized they were going to be doing this the whole damn game, I couldn’t go on after that. The game just insulted my intelligence way too much. It was a great run but I think I’ve had my Final Fantasy with that series.
@Kickstarter: It is true you have to be careful with investing but I wouldn’t say 9/10 video game kick starters have failed. You guys keep seeming to forget to mention the ones that have succeded: FTL, Divinty Original Sin, Shadowgate, Shadowrun, Pillar’s of Eternity, Wasteland 2, etc
Here is a link with a long list of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects
I will concede one has to be careful in choosing products or at least keep in mind that the project may fail and you will get nothing. Kickstarter DOES have on it’s site that there are no guarantees of any products being completed. I like what Hilary said about trying to help these developers out and giving them a chance and I do think Paul is also right that there are those shady individuals that make crowd funding look bad.
@Greg Zeschuk: It’s a shame the title made me think he might work on Baldur’s Gate or something. The idea sounds well meaning but I agree with Jonah I remember just using my imagination to fight strange aliens or playing spys or whatever.