Precursors / Parodies

The Manhole - Mac (1988) Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel - Mac (1989) Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo - Mac (1991) These three games were the first creations of Cyan, before Myst saw the light of day. They do, however, share the same sense of exploration and discovery of their successor, except in a much more cartoony setting. The games are mostly activity centers, focusing on sightseeing and messing around with wacky contraptions instead of solving puzzles. Be warned, though: the games are supposed to be aimed at children and might even be called educational.

The Manhole

Pyst - IBM PC (1996)

Cover

Pyst

Pyst

Myst was apparently memorable enough to get its own parody game, Pyst, in which you travel to the island after 4 million players have reached it before you, "clicking, snooping and spreading germs" all around the place. Pyst was created by Parroty Interactive and features John Goodman as king Mattrus, ruler of Pyst Island. The "game" is mostly for laughs, as there are no puzzles and no goals except listening to the jokes. Quite the opposite: graffiti on walls give away the answers to some of the original game's riddles. The whole thing is ten interactive slides long and lasts about thirty minutes, so there's no reason to buy this except maybe as a collector's item. However, I find it pretty ironic that this short parody involved more people than the full-length game it is based upon. There is a special edition of Pyst that includes a demo for "Driven", their parody sequel, which was never released. While most of the comedy comes from belching and farting noises, there are a few funny jokes in Pyst. Here's one that cracked me up. It's a conversation between the two tour guides that goes something like this: Cheryl: This cave was used by the primitive aboriginal people of Pyst for their ceremonies. Bob: How primitive were they, Cheryl? Cheryl: Their simple language was made up of a mere seven symbols: Hello Goodbye, Tree, Bad, Very, Luck, Martini and Death. Bob: Wow, we know very little about them. Cheryl: Yes, except for their final haunting sentence: "Very Bad Martini Death, Hello Goodbye". Bob: Oh, I've had one of those...

Pyst Pyst

Simpsons Reference

You know you're somebody when The Simpsons mention your existence. In Treehouse of Horrors VI, Homer goes 3D in "Homer^3". One of the things he sees during his adventure is the original Myst library. The music also sounds very similar to Myst's soundtrack. Take a look at this Youtube clip.

The Simpsons

Other Adaptations

Myst - The Book of Atrus Myst - The Book of Ti'ana Myst - The Book of D'ni Rand Miller, Robyn Miller and David Wingrove co-authored three novels to flesh out the story of the Myst franchise. The Book of Atrus relates Atrus' youth up to the events that leads to the very first Myst game. The Book of Ti'ana tells the story of Ti'ana, Atrus' grandmother and the first human to travel down the Great Shaft built by the D'ni to discover their ancient underground civilization. The Book of D'ni is set after the events of Riven, where Atrus tries to rebuild D'ni civilization and meets up with other survivors. This leads to a clash as some survivors depend on slaves to lead their opulent D'ni lifestyle. All three novels were also sold in a single volume, called the Myst Reader. There was supposed to be a fourth novel, The Book of Marrim, but it was put on indefinite hiatus. The Myst novels received pretty bad reviews, as do almost all novels based on video games. They rely pretty heavily on descriptions, but that's something to be expected when writing about a race obsessed with machines and puzzles. The novels are not literature, but they're not bad either. They're still much better than the average third-rate fantasy novel. The Book of Ti'ana is especially good, as its story was mostly self-contained, and it is also the best written of the three. The novels are an interesting read if you want to learn more about Myst's history. The Book of the Black Ships Passages (#0) The Joining (#1) Two comic books were produced as part of a larger series called The Book of the Black Ships about Sirrus and Achenar's rise to evil. Technically, only the second comic is part of the Black Ship series, as issue zero is a side story about the legend of the creation of linking books. The comics were coauthored by Lovern Kindzierski, Chris Ulm and Doug Wheatley. More comics were planned, but Cyan did not consider the first ones to meet their quality standards (they switched the two brothers!) so the series was put to an end. Myst Motion Picture A Myst motion picture (called Project Passage) is in the works. The project is actually led by two people, Patrick A. McIntire and Adrian Vanderbosch, who are more independent filmmakers than high-powered movie executives. Rand Miller describes the project as a "bootstrap operation", so don't expect lots of publicity or a clear production schedule. Have a look at their web site.

Myst - The Book of Atrus Myst Reader The Book of Black Ships

Links Dithering 101 A page explaining the dithering process in Myst. Riven Illuminated Offers a very in-depth look at Riven with plenty of screenshots. Reveals a lot of details about every object in the game and the Easter eggs. Even points out mistakes in Cyan's use of the D'ni language. Myst Worlds - Making of Myst Video You can find on this page a great 4-part documentary on the Myst franchise, created just before the release of Myst V. It was made by Turner in the good old days of Gametap, when they used to make interesting original programming to supplement their downloadable games. Zarf's Reviews of Commecial Games A rather out-of-the-beaten-path website about adventures games that nonetheless contains some of the best, most insightful reviews about the adventure genre that I've read. He's on the Myst side of the adventure game divide, by the way. The site has reviews for all of the Myst games and many other adventures games. An excellent read. Myst III: Exile walkthrough by Ghidrah A walkthrough of Myst III, which you obviously shouldn't read if you don't want to be spoiled. However, I am not linking to it because it helps players with Myst III, but because the author seems to have that certain kind of scientific mindset you need to excel at the more methodical type of adventure games. He doesn't even provide straight answers to the puzzles, just a sort of methodology. I just wanted to copy an excerpt here: So what do we want to do? 1. We want to have the ball successfully maneuver through the roller coaster and reenter the bell house. What do we know? 1. The route begins and ends from the bell house. 2. Each ring structure in the roller coaster vibrates; an improper vibration will destroy a ball. 3. Each ring structure has a panel with 5 settings, (suspect relate to route orientation) 4. On ball test, ring structure crystals blink out of sync to estimated route 5. The platform console display matches the displays on the ring structures panels not the conformation of the roller coaster. What do we need to do? 1. Adjust ring structure #1 at its panel and verify with a test run. What did we learn? 1. The 12:00 panel was set at position #5 which matched the blink pattern of the 1st unadjusted test run. 2. After setting the 12:00 ring structures panel from #5 to #1 the ball made it through 12:00 and was destroyed at 8:00. 3. Our estimated path of the ball follows the route it took through rings #12 and 8. 4. The blinking sequence of the ring structures is caused by the ring structure panel setting. What do we need to do? 1. Reset the remaining 4 ring structure panels to follow the route estimated during the earlier walkthrough. Myst Online: Uru Live The official forums for MOUL, still alive despite the fact that the game is presently offline. Guild of Writers Along with the other four, the Guilds were informal groups meant to organize the community's efforts. The "writers" is the most interesting of the groups: they're actually programmers, typing away in expectation of the Open Source version and building tomorrow's ages today. Uru Obsession Has a lot of info on Uru, both on the online and offline versions of the game. Zalthor's Relto Reproduces Uru's bookshelf in web page format and lets you navigate some ages through stills. Tim Larkin: Composing Myst's Musical World An interview with Tim Larkin on the making of Uru's soundtrack.