Myst | Code Like It's 198x

Myst begins with a book. The player opens it, is carried on a flight over a wooded island, and lands at its dock with no instructions, no score, no enemies and nothing that can kill them. “Myst is a game of discovery,” Computer Gaming World’s reviewer wrote in December 1993, and he declined to say much more in case he spoiled it. Two brothers in Washington state made it with HyperCard, a Macintosh program one of them later called “like a predecessor to the web”, and Brøderbund sold it on CD-ROM, a format still waiting for its first big hit. It sold for most of the decade. When The Sims finally overtook it in 2002, Computer Gaming World described the end of Myst’s “long reign” as the best-selling PC game.

Fast facts

Developer: Cyan, the studio of Rand and Robyn Miller.
Publisher: Brøderbund.
Released: 1993, on Macintosh CD-ROM, at $59.95 in the US and £40 in Britain; for Windows PCs in 1994.
Built with: Apple’s HyperCard, with about 2,500 rendered still images and QuickTime films.
Sales: over three million by 1997 (Edge); seven million by 1999 (PC Zone); the best-selling PC game until The Sims passed it in 2002 (Computer Gaming World, citing Electronic Arts).
Sequels: Riven (1997), Myst III: Exile (2001), Myst IV: Revelation (2004), Myst V: End of Ages (2005).
Remakes: Myst: Masterpiece Edition (1999), realMyst (2000), and a new Myst for virtual reality and flat screens (2020–21).

From The Manhole to Myst

Rand and Robyn Miller were not games people. “Rand had an idea for a children’s book on a computer,” Robyn told Retro Gamer. “A child would turn the page, click on items on each page, and those items would react in certain ways.” “Rand sent me a copy of HyperCard, which was like a predecessor to the web.” The first thing Robyn drew was a manhole against a white background. “What became immediately obvious was that an entire world existed below that manhole, and I wanted to visit it.” That became The Manhole, and Cosmic Osmo and Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo followed, all for the Macintosh and all aimed at children.

According to Retro Gamer, the Millers had suggested a game like Myst to Activision early on and been told to stick to children’s games. The approach that did produce it came from Japan. In the words the magazine attributes to Robyn, “it was Sunsoft who approached us asking us if we’d do a game for an older audience”. Sunsoft later published the Japanese Sega Saturn version, a launch title for the console in November 1994. Brøderbund took the game in America. At the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1993 Computer Gaming World noted that Brøderbund was “venturing into the adventure gaming marketplace” with a CD-ROM adventure from the makers of The Manhole. Rand recalled the publishing meeting to Edge in 2005: “one of the guys said: ‘This is good, we should get this’, and the other said: ‘OK’.”

An island of pictures

Most Macintosh CD-ROM games of the time were built with Macromedia Director, whose animation system, Computer Gaming World explained, slowed an already “poky” CD-ROM drive further. The Millers “chose to use their old buddy HyperCard as the engine to drive Myst”. Every location was a single rendered picture. “Each scene is presented as a 3-D rendered, stationary backdrop,” the magazine wrote. “Any animation that may occur is contained within QuickTime windows that are seamlessly integrated into that backdrop. Navigation is controlled by clicking on the screen in the direction desired.” Clicking at the edge of the screen turned the view, and each scene cross-faded into the next. The 462-megabyte disc held, by the magazine’s count, 66 minutes of QuickTime animation, over 40 minutes of original music and 2,500 ray-traced images. The pre-rendered backgrounds entry follows the technique into the games that added live characters to such pictures.

The music was Robyn’s, and he remained unsure about it. “To this day, I’m still not convinced that Myst required music,” he told Retro Gamer. “Our philosophy was that we were creating a world… When we’re living our daily lives we don’t hear a soundtrack.” Chris Brandkamp made the sound effects. The Millers also played the game’s only people. Short of money, they cast themselves as the brothers Sirrus and Achenar, filming with a cheap video camera, and Rand played their father, Atrus. “We were laughing most of the time,” Robyn said. He hid the rough footage behind flickering static, so that the brothers seem to appear through interference.

Playing it

The story is in the books. Atrus writes books that link to other worlds, called Ages. Someone has been destroying his library, and Computer Gaming World summed up the set-up: suspicion “rests heavily on one of his progenies”. The player explores Myst Island and finds the way into four Ages, each through a linking book hidden on the island: in a ship (the Stoneship Age), a giant tree (Channelwood), a set of gears (Mechanical) and a spaceship (Selenitic), which opens only when the player reproduces a sequence of notes.

Computer Gaming World liked what the design left out. “There is no game clock, the puzzles need not be solved in any particular order, and nothing in the game will cause the player’s character to meet an untimely end.” Observation, “both aural and visual, is the key”, though “perhaps a little musical training and a compass would help too”. Its complaints were practical. Turning on the spot could leave the player disorientated among similar views, and a restored game always started back at the dock, so the reviewer kept walking back across the island. A Zip Mode, which jumped along paths in a few leaps, helped. The box included a notebook for jotting down clues, and he concluded that Myst was “quite simply, the best CD-ROM game currently available for the Macintosh”.

Not every reviewer agreed. Edge gave the Macintosh version six out of ten in January 1994. It admired the “gorgeously ray-traced locations”, but a caption warned that with lighting and textures like these, players might think they had wandered into a “slideshow demo by accident”. The argument went on for years. In 2005 Rand Miller told Edge that “the puzzle players found it too easy, and the explorers found it too hard”.

Sales

Myst’s sales are reported differently in different places, and the figures below are each the source’s own.

Edge, July 1997: Myst “to date has shifted over three million copies”.
Edge, June 1998: “more than three million copies”, making it, the columnist Glyn Williams argued, “the most commercially successful game running on a personal computer of all time”.
PC Zone, December 1999, reviewing the Masterpiece Edition: “It also sold seven million copies worldwide.”
Computer Gaming World, June 2002: The Sims had become “the best-selling PC game of all time, according to Electronic Arts, ending the long reign of previous leader Myst”.
Hyper, April 2003: the series had sold “almost 12 million copies” worldwide.

Retro Gamer summed up the legacy: until The Sims in 2002, Myst was “the bestselling PC title of all time”. Rand Miller gave a simpler explanation to Edge: “We were there at the right time, when the CD-ROM industry was looking for something to grab on to.”

Conversions and remakes

Myst reached Windows in 1994. PC Gamer previewed the conversion in April 1994 as “one of only a handful of Mac to PC portovers”. Versions followed for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation, 3DO, Atari Jaguar CD, CD-i and, in 1998, the Amiga, and later for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS.

The game was remade several times. Myst: Masterpiece Edition (1999), from Brøderbund’s games label Red Orb, redrew the pictures in 24-bit colour instead of 8-bit; PC Zone thought it a cash-in that “looks terrible” beside newer games. realMyst (2000) rebuilt the island in real-time 3D, which let the player walk freely, and added day and night, weather and a new Age, Rime. Robyn Miller, who had left Cyan by then, told Retro Gamer that it “definitely wasn’t how we originally envisioned Myst”. In December 2020 Cyan released a new Myst for the Oculus Quest headset, built to play in virtual reality or on a flat screen and with optional randomised puzzles; it reached PCs and Xbox consoles in August 2021.

The series

Riven (1997), Cyan’s sequel, was published by Brøderbund’s Red Orb label. Robyn left Cyan after it. Two sequels were made by other studios, Myst III: Exile (2001) and Myst IV: Revelation (2004), while Cyan spent six years on Uru, an online game set in the underground city of the D’ni. Its multiplayer service was cancelled in 2004, and Cyan returned for Myst V: End of Ages in 2005, which Edge presented as the series’ closing chapter.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 110, September 1993, p. 20: Summer CES report, Brøderbund and Myst.
Christopher Breen, Myst review, Computer Gaming World issue 113, December 1993, pp. 144–146 (price, HyperCard and Director, the rendered backdrops and QuickTime, the disc’s contents, Zip Mode, the notebook).
Edge issue 4, January 1994, p. 66: Myst review, six out of ten.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 5, April 1994, p. 14: preview of the PC version; Manhole and Cosmic Osmo.
Computer Gaming World issue 121, August 1994, p. 16: a reader’s letter on the PC version (2,500 still shots).
Edge issue 47, July 1997, p. 53: Brøderbund feature (“over three million copies”).
Edge issue 52, 1997, pp. 77–78: Riven, from Cyan and Red Orb.
Edge issue 59, June 1998, p. 70: Glyn Williams, “Gameview”, on Myst and Riven.
Amiga Format issue 112, July 1998, p. 42: Myst guide for the Amiga version (the four linking books; the Selenitic notes).
PC Zone issue 83, December 1999, p. 94: Myst: Masterpiece Edition review (Red Orb, 24-bit colour, seven million copies).
Computer Gaming World issue 198, January 2001, pp. 20–21: realMyst advertisement (real-time 3D, day and night, weather, the Rime Age).
Computer Gaming World issue 215, June 2002, p. 48: “The Sims Hits No. 1”.
Hyper issue 114, April 2003, p. 43: Uru preview (“almost 12 million copies”).
“Out of the Mysts”, interview with Rand Miller, Edge issue 154, October 2005, pp. 57–61 (the publishers’ meeting, puzzle players and explorers, the CD-ROM industry, Robyn’s departure, the out-of-house sequels, Uru, End of Ages).
“The Making of Myst”, Retro Gamer Collection volume 5, 2011, pp. 126–130: Robyn Miller on the children’s book, HyperCard and The Manhole, Activision and Sunsoft, the music, the filming, realMyst; the best-selling PC title until The Sims; the platforms.
“Myst” (Sega Saturn), Sega Retro (web, secondary): Sunsoft’s Japanese release on 22 November 1994, and the names of the Ages. https://segaretro.org/Myst
“Myst remake coming to Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC on August 26”, Gematsu, 17 August 2021 (web, secondary): the Oculus Quest release in December 2020, flat-screen and VR play, optional puzzle randomisation. https://www.gematsu.com/2021/08/myst-remake-coming-to-xbox-series-xbox-one-and-pc-on-august-26