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I was a console gamer and didn't get a PC until my early 20s, but at high school one of our chemistry teachers had a PC with Myst. It was my first PC game, and we would go play it every lunch time trying to figure out the next puzzle.

(pnj, no png)

Plus pc games are a pain to emulate, while console emulation is borderline plug and play So it’s a question of "what you are gonna do" : Play a snoozefest (I am not saying it is, but it’s how it sound like when described) that will require tinkering, or play a jrpg you know you can bruteforce ?

it was the one videogame my dad played

myst was like the only video game any of the adults in my life played as a kid (except my grandpa who played military shooters lol)

Half the reason Blue Prince blew the fuck up the way it did was because it was functionally Myst's spiritual successor...

myst is also a great angle to discuss how influential hypercard was, basically html, flash, and twine games before it existed.

it’s funny to see everyone being like “Myst is the one game my dad/mom/grandma played” b/c Myst is among the few games my dad ever played and he hated it. apparently his brothers told him to play it but recently i asked them about it and *they* hated it too. not sure why they asked him to play it

Myst was just a old game . The 5th gen oregon trail had superior pre-rendered C.G.I. backgrounds . I am not talking about the 1st game with the monochrome art.

I was a kid back then so I can't really be sure of this, but I feel like console games blowing up overwrote a lot of things "computer" games had been up to until then in general. So much dissonant fuss about video games "maturing" around the 2000s when Amiga/PC games had that side to them for yonks

To be fair, I think the significance of FF7 is lost on a lot of people who weren't around for it too. The degree to which it was a step up, and the crossover appeal of it anyway. Particularly in PAL-land, which never got any previous Final Fantasies (or Chrono Trigger)

It's a shame because I hear so much praise for it and then I tried it at a MAGfest display and just bounced right the fuck off of it. I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to be doing, and I grew up in that era of games. How do I approach this thing lol

The part that always infuriates me is that corpos made a big song and dance about how that was somehow 'progress' and because our press was bought and paid for by them they celebrated it.

I don't know about calling Myst the FF7 of its day because its success was in a different world. Myst was one of the first ever games to breach the mainstream beyond your typical "nerd" or kiddie demographic. FF7 was still in the bubble of nerds that grew up on Nintendo.

It was particularly common for adventure games and RPGs, up until about '92-'93. I have a lot of them in my PC game collection. A lot of adventure game hint books came with a red filter you had to use to see the hints, so you wouldn't spoil the answers for yourself by accident.

I think Blue Prince did a good job of having two types of games - the 1st part being a puzzle-y roguelike and the 2nd being a more obtuse, lore-based mystery. I didn't love the RNG balance on the 2nd part but it's a fantastic game that i think had the type of collaboration you're talking about

That’s so cool! In college, I introduced my housemates to the MYST games, and we’d all play together around one computer. A surprisingly communal game! Especially given the sheer loneliness of the worlds.

was... was Myst the original uncslop?

It's been on my list for quite a while! I just have a really extensive backlog and am very busy as an art student >.> I'm sure I'll like it, I'm a big fan of games similar to it from that era and my friends have been recommending it for years!! I might grab it in the next steam sale

Counterpoint: this is the only way peter molyneux should be remembered

Yea, alongside the whole killer app that helped popularize games on optical media thing, going through old adventure games there's a very distinct pre and post myst era where suddenly everyone wants to do first person adventure games with fmv transitions and copy mysts presentation

The Sims was the most important game of all time for several years but even the owners of the franchise can't successfully iterate on that to the relative level of the first game

Been a Myst fan for so long that it is always kind of shocking to realize "oh right, not every creator/studio gets to stay this involved over the years".

MYST didn’t define a genre it created a genre

that riven remaster is pretty fuckin' crispy, i gotta say

it is basically the one video game my dad ever played

only game my grandmother ever installed

From the team that brought us Microshaft Winblows 98

Parroty Interactive lives forever.

Hell, every adult in my life in the 90s who looked down on Doom as being trashy wanted all games to be Myst

It's true that Myst was released before Doom. However, Myst wasn't ported to PC until a few months after Doom's release (Myst was originally a Mac title).

it definitely is up there with tetris, and super mario bros.

the only games before ff7 were doom and super mario

hey can you post something that's just a matter of public record and recent memory so that I can just reply "nope" over and over?

i agree strongly with the point that you’re making and honestly I think this is underselling it. My 80 year old dad and his friends could never have told you word one about FFVII but they sure as shit knew what myst was

Challenge anyone to watch the 2014 video game documentary with a straight face youtu.be/8Ryn7qm3CvI

Willing to bet your average bsky gaming account would be OBSESSED with them if they get a video essay by Majuular or blog as good as CRPG Addict.

I think this comes down to age. I know 20 year olds who have never played a Metal Gear or Castlevania. Time moves on and the game industry does not have a largely agreed upon as gospel institution that’s dedicated to keeping these things relevant after 2 years.

TLC and Mattel hoped to make a lot of money from Riven, the sequel to Myst, but it didn't do very well. You're 100% right about what an event Myst was when it was first released, even though a lot of people who weren't gamers bought it and couldn't get very far. Bundled with PCs and CD-ROM kits.

Also a lot of major milestone western games were further from the current traditional AAA mold like how FF7 created it so it’s harder to make the mainstream care about them.

A lot of hit indie games that managed to cross over into mainstream success are going to see this too, like what happened with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Disco Elysium.

Wasn't Myst the best selling PC game of all time from its release until 2000? Like, nothing managed to de-throne it until The Sims.

Console gamers historically haven't liked RPGs or puzzle games much since the Xbox released and subsequently became really popular which may have something to do with it

Oh absolutely. Even some classic adventure game fans (Sierra, etc.) looked down on it for not really having any failure states like older PC point-and-clicks did. Seen that crowd rag on it for being a dumbed-down iteration of the genre that was propped up by tech and nothing else.

God, thank you! While publishers are to blame too, complete discourse dominance by console discourse in 00s and early 2010s killed respect for classic PC Gaming for far too long. People are to blame too, as do the press of that era.

Huh? I guess we hang in different online circles.

I've never been a PC gamer, always console, and I legit didn't know there was a Nintendo port until right now

I maintain a genuine Windows 98 machine mostly for the sake of messing around in SimCopter. But I have met more than a few people who have basically said "I wouldn't be interested in a SimCity collection if it didn't have the SNES version," and that's another reason to belittle the Nintendo kids.

I have good news about Prince of Persia: princejs.com

keep posting, your doing grate

The PC version came out only six months later, though. That's soon enough that I'd say it counts

*into their computers...

It’ll hit you in a couple of months when you’re replying to some nostalgia bait post, don’t worry.

It was huge even in rural Tasmania lol.

if you were white and in the suburbs yes but there is an entire world out there who doesn't know what zelda is but know myst is that game that was on everyones family computer but its ok. i can lie and tell you the nintendo 64 was culturally relevant if it helps you process this better.

afaik Myst sold ~12mil copies in its original run, aLttP sold 4mil; this is simply untrue

How's it feel to be so wrong

I remember there was a parody game called Pyst that starred John fucking Goodman in FMV, he even sang a theme song.

The western game industry has no respect for authors. They buy a name, fire the creators, and backfill with trash -- then wonder why it doesn't sell. Or worse, financially succeed with that trash, and set a formula in stone for installments III - XVLCVLII.

Hot take: Myst was the Forrest Gump of video games. It was a giant hit at release but looking back, it's almost impossible to see why. Other things from the era have aged far better.

MYST was that era's "everyone played this" game. It's like Tetris or Wii Bowling. Non gamers played that. Your meemaw was playing MYST

Myst was the first game I remember having on PC I literally just finished re-playing them all and just discovered Cyan are keeping Uru Online servers up.

The first one was awesome. I had a hard time getting interested in the other two (for the same reasons I got bored by some of the “here’s the history of all the old kings” stuff in parts of URU).

Huh? It was big but it wasn't that big.

When Portal came out, my initial reaction was "this is pretty much joining Myst and Doom".

imagine if someone gave the same kind of care to the first Ultima games that Square-Enix gives to early Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest