Myst
Myst was designed by Rand and Robyn Miller, developed by Cyan, and published in 1993 by Brøderbund. The original version was made in HyperCard for the Macintosh. It was later brought to a wide variety of systems including Windows, Sega Saturn, Jaguar, PlayStation, iPhone, PSP, and Nintendo DS, among others. It was remade in 2000 as realMyst, then remade again for VR in 2020, becoming just Myst once again. Myst was the best selling PC game for almost a decade. It inspired countless other games, including some that are great, many that were half-hearted at best, multiple parodies, and even an advergame for Cherry Coke.
Myst drops you into its world with no more than a brief voiceover, and little interface apart from the mouse pointer that represents your hand. You’re left to explore Myst Island on your own to understand what happened there. You’ll need to observe carefully, experiment with mechanisms you find, and read through the books you discover to unlock the island’s mysteries.
It was a delight to play through this game again after so many years. I started the first video with a demo of HyperCard, followed by a brief look at Robyn and Rand Miller’s first game, The Manhole. Then after playing through the original HyperCard version of Myst, I played the 2021 remake for the first time.
- Myst (2021)
Available for Mac, Windows, Xbox Series X and S, SteamVR, Meta Quest, and Viveport. - Myst: Masterpiece Edition (1999)
Available for Mac and Windows. This is a lightly updated version of the original game. - Classic Cyan Games
Available for Windows and iPhone. Cyan’s early games were made in HyperCard for Mac, but unfortunately they are not currently available commercially for Mac. - The Making Of Myst (1993) - Remastered
The making of video included on the Myst CD-ROM, remade from source footage. - Library Highlight: The unseen history of Myst
Over 100 hours of footage preserved by the Video Game History Foundation. - Myst on Wikipedia
- Myst on MobyGames
1993, Part 1
Happy MARCHintosh! I’m playing Myst tonight for the first time in 30 years! But first I want to talk about HyperCard, a wonderful program by Bill Atkinson that inspired not just Cyan and many other game devs, but also the web. We can still learn a lot from it!