Join me in celebration of everyone’s favorite pre-rendered CD-ROM based point-and-click adventure game. Sure, games like King’s Quest and Monkey Island had better stories, dialogue, and gameplay, but Myst was ahead of the industry in that it understood what really sells games: being shiny. It’s testament to just how immersive the game was at the time that this glorified Hypercard brain teaser competed with far more substantial games like Doom, Beneath A Steel Sky, Alien Breed, and Flashback — and utterly humiliated them in sales. At a time when 3D was still gestating (Quake was yet to come) the beautiful pre-rendered worlds were irresistible to all ages. Myst and Cyan have since almost completely fallen off the radar, although Uru was pretty cool.
I know I thoroughly enjoyed playing most of the way through it (got stumped at the end) and then most of the way through Riven (stumped again), but I don’t think either are going on my list of games my children will have to complete to get their allowance. What, it builds character!