There are a few games in the past which caused some major changes in the games industry. One of these revolutionary games is Myst: a first person adventure using a point and click interface. It started in 1990, when founders and brothers Robyn and Rand Miller started Cyan. This software company first focussed on children titles, but in 1993 they released the project Myst on the Apple Macintosh. Myst became very very popular and more than 11 million copies were sold. No wonder Philips wanted a CD-i version. In 1996, we got one. Myst was ported to CD-i and Ledge Multimedia was responsible for the conversion.
Myst consists mainly of stills creating a beautifully 3D drawn world with a small movie once in a while. The essence in Myst is to solve puzzles. There are no enemies, no power-ups, nothing like that. In Myst, you play as "Stranger", and you find a mysterious book. You start reading, and when you touch the very last page, something strange happens. You're being transported to the virtual world described in the book. You don't know how you got there, or what you have to do. Soon enough you find other buildings on the island, all with strange mysterious powers. Without spoiling too much of the story, I can tell you will find other books like this, and you are able to transport to other islands (called "Ages" in Myst).
The CD-i version hasn't lost anything of its charme. Everything in the game shows its peace. Everything is quiet here. In fact, this is one of the few games you won't even notice the CD-i is a slow console. It all adds to the atmosphere in the game. After arriving on the unknown island, all you hear are some background sounds and you're able to walk around. Using the mouse cursor on screen you click where you want to go, and the next screen is loaded. True, while wandering around you see you're not actually walking, but instead everytime you click another image is loaded. Myst looks like a slideshow, something borrowed by the CD-i game "L'Ange et le Demon".
Below you'll see our testing phase disc of Myst CD-i. It's one of the first times I hear some benefits of a beta CD-i disc. We've seen a lot of 'Testing Phase'
and 'Beta' CD-i discs but most of the time it's about 99,9% the
complete retail version. In Zelda's Adventure we were able to spot some
unseen arrows to guide the road a little more, but it seems that a
testing disc of Myst offer you to warp to all locations. A great way to
quickly explore the world of Myst. It's ofcourse a logic addition so the
developers were able to test the game rather quickly. Seb knows more: "I've
got a beta/test disc of Myst. It's a great way to just experience the
game atmosphere a bit, as it lets you warp to all locations. It's been a
good while since I booted it up, but I believe it has an options menu
which offer the ability to warp around. The disc also allows you to see
all the scenes and there is an alternative transition option when going
to different screens in the game I believe."
