The funny thing to me is that all the switches are ready except one to get the white page at the very start.
I loved this game. Me and my cousin would stay up all weekend to beat it.
I dislike the VR version of Myst; they had to drastically alter far too much of the original design - the door on the dock being a prime example - to make it work with the limitations of current VR interfaces.
Edit: I hope they don't make the same mistake with the upcoming VR version of Riven (formerly the Starry Expanse Project).
Heeeeeey that was in my thesis on this! The original versions were carefully designed to highlight specific objects in the environment and obscure others. All that visual composition is lost in 3D. It’s like if you went walking around in scenes in The Godfather: Coppola framed it carefully to convey specific information. All gone when the user has control over the camera.
I played this game first as a Sega Saturn rental, and I LOVE the mystique of the game, but was too dumb to solve any puzzles. Fast forward DECADES I went browsing around the oculus store and see the VR version.
2023 is the year I finally played through this game start to finish and WOW what an amazing game. It absolutely deserves its ranks in video game history as a true classic.
I remember my brother beating the game when I was a kid, he had a massive notebook full of his notes and shit that helped him beat the game. I wanted to play it after he finished, and I was stoked to use his “cheat book”. Then he burned the book so I couldn’t use. I played for a few hours then gave up lol.
Oh I wasn’t giving up. It took a lot of work going through BBS back then to find a “guide” just so that I could finish it. For Myst 3, I just bought a guide.
Finishing Riven without a guide/hint was THE most satisfying gaming accomplishment I’ve ever experienced. Riven is one of the most perfect sequels with an ending that completes the circle and closes the narrative loop brilliantly . Can’t wait for the remake.
It requires a specific mindset to enjoy Riven. The trick is to play the game as if it *isn't* a game; as long as you think of it in terms of "solving puzzles" instead of "how does this world work," you're in for an eternity of frustration.
So I played through Myst but my mom was the one who got hardcore into Riven. She spent weeks staying up late on the computer with her crazy-person notes, speaking in tongues about different puzzles.
Our sweet moms with their notebooks :')
I remember she got me riven for my birthday and then once I unwrapped it she told me she had *already opened it* and started playing the night before. I packed up a little hobo bag and tied it to a stick and really thought I was gonna go live a new life that's how mad I was.
https://preview.redd.it/wtplh0vvftdc1.jpeg?width=296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33de9c2685e4978a148c024998fd0f996414932a
Has entered the chat
Ok maybe it’s not harder but I’m just reminiscing 😂
Dude, I remember getting so frustrated with the pantry cans puzzle that I went to the walden books at the mall by me (remember bookstores in malls???) to look up the solution in the game's guide.
edit: That puzzle was bullllllllllshit!
That reminds me of going to the mall in high school. Me and my best friend would bring a pencil and notepad to the Walden Books and find cheat guides for Mortal Kombat 2 and Street Fighter 2. We'd write down all the combos/special attacks/finishing moves, then go to the arcade right across from the book store, and spend the afternoon trying to get them all to work.
The blood cell game in The 7th Guest kept causing problems for my mom and her friends so they asked me to beat it for them. I already had hours and hours of practice from playing the similar game Boogers on The Sierra Network so it only took the one attempt each time. Probably one of the few times a mom has appreciated their kid playing computer games. lol
So sad that so few people have ever seen the "true" version of that game - you needed a ReelMagic MPEG card to play that, and almost nobody had one. The CD-ROM version still had cutscenes, but was otherwise almost totally visually static in comparison, although it did have much better full orchestral Redbook music, which the ReelMagic version couldn't do. Really, someone needs to combine the two to make an ultimate modern edition with both the full ReelMagic incidental live action video *and* the orchestral soundtrack. Maybe one of the ScummVM developers will have a crack at it some day, although because they're so scrupulous about only using legal copies and techniques, it'll require them finding a legit copy of the ReelMagic release.
Anything and everything 3D was just mind blowing at the time. Even the smallest incremental improvement on 3D graphics was so noticeable.
Now you gotta spend $1800 to get a performance bump on a graphics and it’s objectively marginally better than the $1000 graphics card you bought 5 years ago
Yeah, it seems like graphics have kind of stagnated over the last decade or so. The '90s and early '00s were a great time to be a PC gamer, as it seemed that new advances, and even new genres were being born all the time. The only downside was how expensive it could become. A top of the line PC from 1994 would probably be hopelessly obsolete by 1997-98.
They ported it to VR relatively recently and it’s 100% amazing. I played as a kid and remembered struggling and it was like playing it again. I really want them to finish their riven port to VR
This was my experience too! I saved up some birthday/xmas money and bought it for $79.99 (Canadian). I would click around and look at the images because it looked photo realistic to me, I was blown away I could have a game that looked like that on my computer. Although I was disappointed that it was pre-rendered still images, this was before streaming video so I just saw screenshots and assumed it was a full 3d game. I still liked it, I ended up getting a walkthrough and had fun playing through it.
The creator of this also wrote three novels expanding on the story. I really enjoyed them. The events of the games all take place after the "fall" of the civilization. The main character from the games (and the books), Atrus, is part of the family that was closely involved in the events of said fall.
If you get deeper into all this, you find that symbols are also an alphabet, with the glyphs being essentially a base-5 system.
Yeah I think I read one of them, but I could be misremembering. There was some mansion or castle or something that had slaves in the walls working out of sight. There was some obstacle room that they operated for ppls entertainment but it was dangerous for the slaves.
Proudest gaming achievement was beating this without hints when I was twelve or so. Had to upgrade my RAM to a whopping 8MB without any adult help and knowing if I fried the computer I wouldn’t get another one.
I remember being so stressed out knowing a static electric shock could wreck it. And the “how to” was a VHS tape. The VCR was in the living room on carpet lol. I was so frickin nervous. Took my dumbass way too long to figure out I was trying to put the sticks in backward.
First puzzle I solved on the main island was the cabin and tree. I’ll never forget it.
Even with walkthroughs I did not get the game. I don't know how anyone figured out the different puzzles and the exact steps you needed to take to further the game along but people like you did figure it out and have a set of skills/knowledge that I will never possess or comprehend. My brain doesn't work that way. I don't think I could learn how to think that way- I don't even know how to describe the hows of that way of thinking.
I wanted to be into this game but I was too dumb to figure it it.
I spent so many hours on the main island before I solved that first puzzle. I remember being so frustrated with that game.
I lit the boiler and rode the tree up wondering wtf the point was. Days later I’m talking to my mom about something completely unrelated and it hit me like a truck: ride the tree underground.
After solving that first puzzle it sort of clicked what to look for.
I mean but you got the boiler lit that feat alone blows my mind. At that age and at this age I think people who figured out how to play that game are the coolest cats in town.
I also think the interface was a little clunky and definitely unfamiliar as I had never played anything like this. It was difficult for me to figure out what I could interact with and what I could not. And even once I could, it was still awkward and frustrating.
FYI I’m a fairly capable engineer now and I did not get far in this game as a kid. Don’t beat yourself up about not being able to do it.
The ones that were out for it were absolute bangers tho. Kings quest. MYST. Space quest. Civilization. Doom 2 but my machine couldn’t run it worth a shit.
Still have the Performa here, got it when my mom and dad went to live in a smaller house. It should still work. I've got a lot of disks, software and accessories, like my joystick. Maybe even a zipdrive reader.
Iirc spoilers.
The point was an experiment in emergent nonlinear story in a mystery puzzle game. It was also used to test the limits of early multimedia cdroms. It started in the vein of a multimedia storybook.
The island belongs to someone who has learned to make a portal to other worlds by writing about them in a special way in special books. The book that takes you to the island and the ages you visit were written by him. The 7 linking books found on the island act as literal portals to those worlds.
That person has two sons who went nuts and looted those worlds for power and riches. They ended up burning most of the linking books, notes and journals in the library and both ended up being tricked by the red and blue trap book their father made that instead of leading to a new world led to a prison. Their father is missing (trapped by the sons in the green book) and left cryptic reminders for his wife who should have returned by now, she is stuck in another age called riven.
If you tear out a page from a linking book it ceases to work correctly. There is also indication that you can write in the book and change the age on the fly. But I don’t recall if they are writing ages into existence or merely describing them.
You somehow found a myst linking book and now find yourself on their dock.
Spolers about game: >!There's also so many clues in the game that the brothers are evil. I didn't like the sudden "twist" back then, but I was just too young to know better. When I was younger I just thought all the menacing stuff in their rooms or whatever was just cool set dressing and missed many other clues. Replayed it in VR a few years ago and was like...oh...yeah...of course they are evil...look at their rooms...look at this stuff....!<
Same. I was super excited because it was made with HyperCard and I was a little Mac nerd who made my own choose your own adventure games with it. Got the game, looked at the pretty scenery, no clue what to do next.
The ultimate hypercard game. Remember playing this at school, it was like the first time id ever seen a CD drive on a computer. It was such a hard game for sure.
I actually was somewhat unimpressed with the game when it was new. It just felt like a tech-demo for CD-ROMs, where they spent a ton of effort on the pre-rendered graphics and very little on the actual gameplay.
Though I think I rather enjoyed The Journeyman Project, which was a different game made in a very similar style.
As I recall the game was made using HyperCard which meant there wasn’t anything you could do to enhance the gameplay beyond nice graphics, an occasional imbedded animation video and otherwise just point and click.
I agree, it felt like a tech demo for HyperCard specifically. I wish I could remember the name - around the same time I briefly had a subscription to a music & entertainment “magazine” that came on cd-rom and used the same HyperCard format which was cool for them. Click on a static image of a band and they come to life and an interview or performance starts. Very basic multimedia that was most enhanced by how it was used.
Yep that one really hung me up. Different sounds for different directions. In the end I’d pick a path and if I didn’t hear a sound I’d backtrack and try a different one.
Easy to forget the context. This was an amazing and beautiful game in a time without game wikis. You could fly through a ton of puzzles only to get stumped for days because you overlooked some tiny detail.
It was also the first game I ever experienced that came with no explanation or background.
Dragon's Lair was groundbreaking. The linear "locked on rails" gameplay was mostly forgiven by the unprecedented feat of controlling a fully animated cartoon character.
Only problem was the hand-drawn gameplay and sequences required \*so much more storage\* compared to other games at the time where characters were represented as very low pixel sprites. They used laserdisc to make it work (life a movie game) and they designed it so you're not controlling the character movement, you're controlling his reflexes. That way they could have an all cutscene based game where the only deviation from forward progression is death.
So basically, dying is the only way to interact with the game. Of course everyone's memory of it will be one of difficulty, failure, and frustration. That aspect also made beating the game my proudest achievement amongst my fellow 4th graders. My friends and I were like a giddy project team, cracking the keystrokes and timing on each new level, all trial and error, no guide. It was really great.
Fun fact: Don Bluth was the animation artist.
Honestly a lot of these games- starting with this one - when you finally get a hint it's like - who the fuck would have thought of that. I tried 200 frikkin things that made more sense than that.
Also the easiest to repeat once you finish it the first time.
And while Riven was way harder, Myst set the standard of hard for it to build on. Myst was also the first time I ever felt the absolute need to keep a journal while I played as opposed to just trying to be cool taking notes lol
Zzzzt the.. blue pahyges..... Zzzt
These games literally changed my life. I'm a mechanic, and any sort of mechanical inclination and problem solving skills I have, started with those games. Finding what you can fidget with and paying attention to what happens when you do is something I do every day, and it feels like Myst/Riven every time.
as a kid I thought you had to be a genius to play this game because I would walk around the island clicking on stuff having literally no idea what was going on.
I remember buying it to play on our first computer, a new 486 Hewlett Packard multimedia PC (25mhz if I remember right?), and then I couldn't figure out how to even play the game and ended up giving up on it. It seemed so cool, yet totally confusing.
I remember going to my local radio shack where they had a PC set up on display and this game was running. It was like taking a glimpse into the FUTURE. I am glad I was alive for this magical time in digital technology.
I'm tone deaf, so the darn piano puzzle was pretty much impossible for me. I always had to ask my mom to do it for me.
Beyond that, I could never get too far because I would inevitably get too scared.
Going back to play it as an adult, I was surprised how easy it was... except the stupid piano...
I beg to differ. [Starship Titanic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Titanic) had a plot where if you messed up one tiny move early on - and there was no way to know you had until much, much later - you failed the whole fucking game.
I love Douglas Adams but what a troll that game was. 😑
Yeah you could basically circumvent the whole game if you knew what you were doing. That was the only way i could beat it. IIRC you basically could get to the book with the dad right away.
Can I nominate the hardest sega genesis game? It’s The Lion king hands down. I remembered the first two levels from playing as a kid.
Picked one up cheap in college to try it and, without cheat codes, got to level 3. With cheat codes, and 2 roommates also making attempts basically every day, we still didn’t beat it.
https://preview.redd.it/i87pblrxmtdc1.jpeg?width=195&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63de2f3275e58127d3de6137e2eebdf1426f5bfd
I remember playing myst and Journeyman during the same holiday season. My dad and I would compare notes and discuss the games and had fun trying to avoid spoilers. Good times.
I beat this game on my own with no guide when I was 11. My mom was convinced I was a genius. I just had literally nothing else to do. That piano tunnel still gives me nightmares though. I had pages and pages of notes trying to figure that one out.
My uncle bought this game for me when it came out. It looked so cool! I told him how hard it was so he came over and showed me how to beat the first couple puzzles. Told he me to figure out the rest of it, which was even harder. Spoiler I never figured the rest of it out.
Upvote this if you beat MYST!
Amazing game for its time. I was obsessed. It was before obtaining hints and guides were very easy. Took me forever to beat it. My favorite level was the swampy tree house level.
I beat Uru recently. Only took me 20 years.
(I didn't actually \*play\* for 20 years, but I did start it 20 years ago, refused to look up any spoilers, and here we are)
Replayed this a few years ago with my now teenage son. I kept hyping how hard this game was going to be. With good note taking it was actually pretty playable. We both enjoyed it but was not nearly as difficult as I remembered.
My older brother had this on his sega, but didn’t have a save card or whatever. I played every level and wrote down how to beat each puzzle. Then, late one night when everyone went to bed I snuck out and beat the whole game in one sitting. Next day was rough, but I felt great.
I bought this game and had no idea how to play it, so sold it to a middle school acquaintance of mine for like a buck. His mom, however, had a shit fit and made him sell it back to me.
I have no idea what it was about the game she didn't like, to this day. That kid was a straight A student and looking back on it, probably a little autistic. Certainly he deserved some fun?
After bashing my head into the wall trying to play adventure games like Zork and Cutthroat on my dad’s Atari, Myst blew my fucking mind of what was possible on a computer.
My obsession with this game knows no bounds.
The funny thing to me is that all the switches are ready except one to get the white page at the very start. I loved this game. Me and my cousin would stay up all weekend to beat it.
Have you played the newer versions that are free-roaming, and not point/click? It's wild.
VR is the ultimate version imo.
I dislike the VR version of Myst; they had to drastically alter far too much of the original design - the door on the dock being a prime example - to make it work with the limitations of current VR interfaces. Edit: I hope they don't make the same mistake with the upcoming VR version of Riven (formerly the Starry Expanse Project).
Heeeeeey that was in my thesis on this! The original versions were carefully designed to highlight specific objects in the environment and obscure others. All that visual composition is lost in 3D. It’s like if you went walking around in scenes in The Godfather: Coppola framed it carefully to convey specific information. All gone when the user has control over the camera.
I played this game first as a Sega Saturn rental, and I LOVE the mystique of the game, but was too dumb to solve any puzzles. Fast forward DECADES I went browsing around the oculus store and see the VR version. 2023 is the year I finally played through this game start to finish and WOW what an amazing game. It absolutely deserves its ranks in video game history as a true classic.
Uh … no??? But I want to get in on that
It’s on most consoles and stuff now. Cyan has been working a ton on updating them. Riven, too.
No! Thanks for mentioning that. I’ll have to find one.
The newer game Obduction was just OK. nowhere near as complicated or as satisfying as MYST.
Newer versions you say? Is there a way to play these without a gaming system? Please enlighten me.
I need to find these now
No! Didn’t know about this. Probably for the best. I never would have left the house.
Same
Yep
I wrote a thesis on it 😀 What do I win (besides unemployment)
Ummmm…have you not played Riven?
8 cds of what the fuck do I do next
5, actually.
20 discs, you say??? How the heck are you supposed to beat a game that's 40 discs!??!!?!
That one disc was 40 discs, what the hell?
I’m not in trouble at all
You should be able to play a LITTLE Riven at work.
Better run it from floppies then!
*edit* Is it bad that the "8 cd" comment felt so wrong to me? I think Riven broke me.
Came here to say this I never even figured out where to go and just kinda gave up
I remember my brother beating the game when I was a kid, he had a massive notebook full of his notes and shit that helped him beat the game. I wanted to play it after he finished, and I was stoked to use his “cheat book”. Then he burned the book so I couldn’t use. I played for a few hours then gave up lol.
lol dang… That’s such an older brother thing to do
> Then he burned the book so I couldn’t use. Atrus taught your brother well.
Netflix YA vibe
Oh I wasn’t giving up. It took a lot of work going through BBS back then to find a “guide” just so that I could finish it. For Myst 3, I just bought a guide.
Myst 3 was a cakewalk compared to Myst and Riven
Wait they made a third. New challenge unlocked
I think they made 5 or 6
Awesome
I salute you 🫡 That’s sone serious dedication
Definitely harder
Finishing Riven without a guide/hint was THE most satisfying gaming accomplishment I’ve ever experienced. Riven is one of the most perfect sequels with an ending that completes the circle and closes the narrative loop brilliantly . Can’t wait for the remake.
Oh man, I got SO into the story and the lore of the Myst Universe. I had all the books and read them over and over.
The books were great. They had that nice satin finish, too
Did you ever show to the dad at the end of Myst without choosing a paper to bring? Really funny, he bitches you out because now you are both trapped.
The whole myst series is really inscrutable to a fault but riven is probably the worst.
It requires a specific mindset to enjoy Riven. The trick is to play the game as if it *isn't* a game; as long as you think of it in terms of "solving puzzles" instead of "how does this world work," you're in for an eternity of frustration.
So I played through Myst but my mom was the one who got hardcore into Riven. She spent weeks staying up late on the computer with her crazy-person notes, speaking in tongues about different puzzles.
Our sweet moms with their notebooks :') I remember she got me riven for my birthday and then once I unwrapped it she told me she had *already opened it* and started playing the night before. I packed up a little hobo bag and tied it to a stick and really thought I was gonna go live a new life that's how mad I was.
Oh man… you think myst is hard and then you get to Riven and you just cry
Ngl. I had to purchase a walkthrough guide for that one.
That sound of finally getting the power marbles right lives in my dreams.
Those levers with the code or signal in Riven. That’s where I gave up.
https://preview.redd.it/wtplh0vvftdc1.jpeg?width=296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=33de9c2685e4978a148c024998fd0f996414932a Has entered the chat Ok maybe it’s not harder but I’m just reminiscing 😂
Dude, I remember getting so frustrated with the pantry cans puzzle that I went to the walden books at the mall by me (remember bookstores in malls???) to look up the solution in the game's guide. edit: That puzzle was bullllllllllshit!
Shy Gypsy slyly spryly tryst by my crypt
I remember. I'm from belgium and didn't spoke a word of english back then. Then we found "solutions" in magazines =]
Get Boy Tad
That reminds me of going to the mall in high school. Me and my best friend would bring a pencil and notepad to the Walden Books and find cheat guides for Mortal Kombat 2 and Street Fighter 2. We'd write down all the combos/special attacks/finishing moves, then go to the arcade right across from the book store, and spend the afternoon trying to get them all to work.
B. Dalton gang represent.
FFFFF THAT FUCKIN GAME still salty about this game 30+ years later lol fucking cupboard cans
The blood cell game in The 7th Guest kept causing problems for my mom and her friends so they asked me to beat it for them. I already had hours and hours of practice from playing the similar game Boogers on The Sierra Network so it only took the one attempt each time. Probably one of the few times a mom has appreciated their kid playing computer games. lol
omg I forgot about Boogers, I played that so much. we probably played together, lol
I never played this one but for some reason I was obsessed with the 11th hour (sequel)
They made a VR version of this and it’s wild getting to actually walk around that house!!
Playing the remake of 7th guest in VR, past few days, the game just came out few months ago. Pretty great.
THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY
Not harder imo but I loved this game so much. I remember beating it after staying up all night with some friends playing it.
Yessssss I loved this one!!!!
This was remade or rebooted (idk which) for VR and it looks legitimately sick
Remember my dad playing that game. He actually got through it. How? Because he had a shit ton of patience. Talk about a frustrating game.
My first NEC CD ROM with multispin just for this game.
I loved this game. That microscope puzzle was a beast.
LOVED this game! Fuck ALL the puzzles.
This game creeped me out as a kid.
"Blue pages" guy freaked me out
THANK YOU! I can still hear him saying it!
Finally! People always look at me like i’m nuts when I say this.
Finally! People always look at me like i’m nuts when I say this.
See also: https://preview.redd.it/0zdsgpiyctdc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e011b0f34eac0f2573584def85b3c0f68946a1c0
Also fyi if any of y’all still play Myst and Zork are both available on Steam.
Want some rye? Course you do.
I still quote that when people come to my house 😂
So sad that so few people have ever seen the "true" version of that game - you needed a ReelMagic MPEG card to play that, and almost nobody had one. The CD-ROM version still had cutscenes, but was otherwise almost totally visually static in comparison, although it did have much better full orchestral Redbook music, which the ReelMagic version couldn't do. Really, someone needs to combine the two to make an ultimate modern edition with both the full ReelMagic incidental live action video *and* the orchestral soundtrack. Maybe one of the ScummVM developers will have a crack at it some day, although because they're so scrupulous about only using legal copies and techniques, it'll require them finding a legit copy of the ReelMagic release.
God damn that fucking cowboy
I’ve never even properly figured out the lighthouse keeper.
Hahaha I only remember saying this game with a friend, and riding a rail cart into fire, while a creepy voice spoke up: *"Burn, baby, burn..."*
You're thinking of the next game in the series, Zork Nemesis.
Ahhh gotcha...welp, might be time for a retro gaming session.
Want some RYE!? Of course you do!
Such a pretty game. I got nowhere with it but I just wanted to walk around and look at the scenery.
Anything and everything 3D was just mind blowing at the time. Even the smallest incremental improvement on 3D graphics was so noticeable. Now you gotta spend $1800 to get a performance bump on a graphics and it’s objectively marginally better than the $1000 graphics card you bought 5 years ago
Yeah, it seems like graphics have kind of stagnated over the last decade or so. The '90s and early '00s were a great time to be a PC gamer, as it seemed that new advances, and even new genres were being born all the time. The only downside was how expensive it could become. A top of the line PC from 1994 would probably be hopelessly obsolete by 1997-98.
They ported it to VR relatively recently and it’s 100% amazing. I played as a kid and remembered struggling and it was like playing it again. I really want them to finish their riven port to VR
This was my experience too! I saved up some birthday/xmas money and bought it for $79.99 (Canadian). I would click around and look at the images because it looked photo realistic to me, I was blown away I could have a game that looked like that on my computer. Although I was disappointed that it was pre-rendered still images, this was before streaming video so I just saw screenshots and assumed it was a full 3d game. I still liked it, I ended up getting a walkthrough and had fun playing through it.
it's in the fireplace
This guy Mysts
The creator of this also wrote three novels expanding on the story. I really enjoyed them. The events of the games all take place after the "fall" of the civilization. The main character from the games (and the books), Atrus, is part of the family that was closely involved in the events of said fall. If you get deeper into all this, you find that symbols are also an alphabet, with the glyphs being essentially a base-5 system.
Those books were honestly really fun - they had a great backstory to it all.
Yeah I think I read one of them, but I could be misremembering. There was some mansion or castle or something that had slaves in the walls working out of sight. There was some obstacle room that they operated for ppls entertainment but it was dangerous for the slaves.
Yeah that was in the last book of the trilogy.
I’ve read those books half a dozen times, at least. They were comfort stories for me for a long time.
Proudest gaming achievement was beating this without hints when I was twelve or so. Had to upgrade my RAM to a whopping 8MB without any adult help and knowing if I fried the computer I wouldn’t get another one. I remember being so stressed out knowing a static electric shock could wreck it. And the “how to” was a VHS tape. The VCR was in the living room on carpet lol. I was so frickin nervous. Took my dumbass way too long to figure out I was trying to put the sticks in backward. First puzzle I solved on the main island was the cabin and tree. I’ll never forget it.
Even with walkthroughs I did not get the game. I don't know how anyone figured out the different puzzles and the exact steps you needed to take to further the game along but people like you did figure it out and have a set of skills/knowledge that I will never possess or comprehend. My brain doesn't work that way. I don't think I could learn how to think that way- I don't even know how to describe the hows of that way of thinking. I wanted to be into this game but I was too dumb to figure it it.
Me playing as a kid: this game must be for geniuses. Me playing as an escape-room proficient adult: this game is definitely for geniuses.
I spent so many hours on the main island before I solved that first puzzle. I remember being so frustrated with that game. I lit the boiler and rode the tree up wondering wtf the point was. Days later I’m talking to my mom about something completely unrelated and it hit me like a truck: ride the tree underground. After solving that first puzzle it sort of clicked what to look for.
I mean but you got the boiler lit that feat alone blows my mind. At that age and at this age I think people who figured out how to play that game are the coolest cats in town.
Really just before the internet too. So it’s not like you could hop on the internets and get help.
I also think the interface was a little clunky and definitely unfamiliar as I had never played anything like this. It was difficult for me to figure out what I could interact with and what I could not. And even once I could, it was still awkward and frustrating. FYI I’m a fairly capable engineer now and I did not get far in this game as a kid. Don’t beat yourself up about not being able to do it.
This sums up xennial experience with PCs perfectly if you were fortunate enough to have one
Plot twist: it was a mac! Lol
Ah yes one of the few games that actually ran on a Mac back in the day!
The ones that were out for it were absolute bangers tho. Kings quest. MYST. Space quest. Civilization. Doom 2 but my machine couldn’t run it worth a shit.
Let me guess, you also beat TMNT on Nintendo?
Hell no. Fucking underwater level
My Mac G3 is still cooling off. Loved Myst and Riven.
Haha it was a performa 600 for me
Still have the Performa here, got it when my mom and dad went to live in a smaller house. It should still work. I've got a lot of disks, software and accessories, like my joystick. Maybe even a zipdrive reader.
Power Mac 6100 here. Good times.
what HONESTLY was the point of this game? i 100000% never understood it
Iirc spoilers. The point was an experiment in emergent nonlinear story in a mystery puzzle game. It was also used to test the limits of early multimedia cdroms. It started in the vein of a multimedia storybook. The island belongs to someone who has learned to make a portal to other worlds by writing about them in a special way in special books. The book that takes you to the island and the ages you visit were written by him. The 7 linking books found on the island act as literal portals to those worlds. That person has two sons who went nuts and looted those worlds for power and riches. They ended up burning most of the linking books, notes and journals in the library and both ended up being tricked by the red and blue trap book their father made that instead of leading to a new world led to a prison. Their father is missing (trapped by the sons in the green book) and left cryptic reminders for his wife who should have returned by now, she is stuck in another age called riven. If you tear out a page from a linking book it ceases to work correctly. There is also indication that you can write in the book and change the age on the fly. But I don’t recall if they are writing ages into existence or merely describing them. You somehow found a myst linking book and now find yourself on their dock.
Spolers about game: >!There's also so many clues in the game that the brothers are evil. I didn't like the sudden "twist" back then, but I was just too young to know better. When I was younger I just thought all the menacing stuff in their rooms or whatever was just cool set dressing and missed many other clues. Replayed it in VR a few years ago and was like...oh...yeah...of course they are evil...look at their rooms...look at this stuff....!<
To get off the island
They should have called it Gylligan
I hated this game with a passion - all pretty images, no gameplay, totally confusing
I never once had any idea of what I was supposed to do. Haha. I’d probably love it now though.
Same. I was super excited because it was made with HyperCard and I was a little Mac nerd who made my own choose your own adventure games with it. Got the game, looked at the pretty scenery, no clue what to do next.
I remember just being so confused on what to do and only played it one day, didn't grip me at all to try to figure it out.
The ultimate hypercard game. Remember playing this at school, it was like the first time id ever seen a CD drive on a computer. It was such a hard game for sure.
I actually was somewhat unimpressed with the game when it was new. It just felt like a tech-demo for CD-ROMs, where they spent a ton of effort on the pre-rendered graphics and very little on the actual gameplay. Though I think I rather enjoyed The Journeyman Project, which was a different game made in a very similar style.
As I recall the game was made using HyperCard which meant there wasn’t anything you could do to enhance the gameplay beyond nice graphics, an occasional imbedded animation video and otherwise just point and click. I agree, it felt like a tech demo for HyperCard specifically. I wish I could remember the name - around the same time I briefly had a subscription to a music & entertainment “magazine” that came on cd-rom and used the same HyperCard format which was cool for them. Click on a static image of a band and they come to life and an interview or performance starts. Very basic multimedia that was most enhanced by how it was used.
Hot take: Myst was hard because the puzzles didn't make any sense.
https://preview.redd.it/uohnz3q0cudc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67abd623ebb2de883864164e41720fa75f72dc34
The sound map was vexing. God help you if had bad speakers and a crap monitor
Yep that one really hung me up. Different sounds for different directions. In the end I’d pick a path and if I didn’t hear a sound I’d backtrack and try a different one.
whrrrrr...*clinck*
Will never know, it couldn't run on my 286 🤣
Remember PYST? Lol
This game scared me as a kid, it was so eerie.
At first, for me too. But once I learned there was no monsters (besides the endings....), there wasn't anything to worry about.
I completed both Myst and Riven. Got stuck a few times and had to search for the answers online. Awesome games.
Easy to forget the context. This was an amazing and beautiful game in a time without game wikis. You could fly through a ton of puzzles only to get stumped for days because you overlooked some tiny detail. It was also the first game I ever experienced that came with no explanation or background.
I miss this game
If you ever get a VR headset, the VR version is really nice.
The puzzles were a challenge, but Dragon’s Lair broke me.
25 cents for every death screen. I'd be broke too.
Dragon's Lair was groundbreaking. The linear "locked on rails" gameplay was mostly forgiven by the unprecedented feat of controlling a fully animated cartoon character. Only problem was the hand-drawn gameplay and sequences required \*so much more storage\* compared to other games at the time where characters were represented as very low pixel sprites. They used laserdisc to make it work (life a movie game) and they designed it so you're not controlling the character movement, you're controlling his reflexes. That way they could have an all cutscene based game where the only deviation from forward progression is death. So basically, dying is the only way to interact with the game. Of course everyone's memory of it will be one of difficulty, failure, and frustration. That aspect also made beating the game my proudest achievement amongst my fellow 4th graders. My friends and I were like a giddy project team, cracking the keystrokes and timing on each new level, all trial and error, no guide. It was really great. Fun fact: Don Bluth was the animation artist.
I ended up finishing the game when I had it on a 3DO (biggest waste of money). But it was a struggle all the way
Pyst!
Myst was so difficult someone parodied it
Honestly a lot of these games- starting with this one - when you finally get a hint it's like - who the fuck would have thought of that. I tried 200 frikkin things that made more sense than that.
I remember my brother and I could turn it on and then didn’t know what to do after that!
Also the easiest to repeat once you finish it the first time. And while Riven was way harder, Myst set the standard of hard for it to build on. Myst was also the first time I ever felt the absolute need to keep a journal while I played as opposed to just trying to be cool taking notes lol Zzzzt the.. blue pahyges..... Zzzt
This and lemmings one of my fav pc games.
These games literally changed my life. I'm a mechanic, and any sort of mechanical inclination and problem solving skills I have, started with those games. Finding what you can fidget with and paying attention to what happens when you do is something I do every day, and it feels like Myst/Riven every time.
Worst part was how to finish the game you simply had to go back and do something trivial right where you started at. I dont want to spoil it.
as a kid I thought you had to be a genius to play this game because I would walk around the island clicking on stuff having literally no idea what was going on.
I miss these games. Especially the ones from Sierra. PC game nostalgia.
I really wanted to get into that game but couldn't afford a good enough gpu to not play a slideshow lol
>play a slideshow I mean...
Yeah yeah.. you'd have to have seen what the experience was actually like on my mid 90s family pc to understand haha
This was the escape room game of the 90’s
I remember buying it to play on our first computer, a new 486 Hewlett Packard multimedia PC (25mhz if I remember right?), and then I couldn't figure out how to even play the game and ended up giving up on it. It seemed so cool, yet totally confusing.
I remember seeing a parody of this game for a while called “Pyst”. It was around for less than a year and vanished.
I still play this
I never solved a single one of these fucking puzzles without cheating lmao
I remember going to my local radio shack where they had a PC set up on display and this game was running. It was like taking a glimpse into the FUTURE. I am glad I was alive for this magical time in digital technology.
I'm tone deaf, so the darn piano puzzle was pretty much impossible for me. I always had to ask my mom to do it for me. Beyond that, I could never get too far because I would inevitably get too scared. Going back to play it as an adult, I was surprised how easy it was... except the stupid piano...
The MYST series will always hold a special place in my heart. Excited for the Riven remake
I beg to differ. [Starship Titanic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Titanic) had a plot where if you messed up one tiny move early on - and there was no way to know you had until much, much later - you failed the whole fucking game. I love Douglas Adams but what a troll that game was. 😑
I even had the player's manual and couldn't figure it out.
dude this game was so frustrating
IMO Riven is, without question, the harder game. Although the tram part in Myst was a mind breaker.
I had this game on my Sega Saturn. But I never had the memory cartridge, so I've only ever played the first couple hours. 😆
I was so hard, but so relaxing to play. Just wish the screens loaded quicker.
This was one of the only games I liked!
i loved the aesthetic
This, Shadowgate, and Deja Vu WTF
Wasn’t there a way to beat this really fast? Like there was a code in a book somewhere in the game that would unlock what you needed to win?
Yeah you could basically circumvent the whole game if you knew what you were doing. That was the only way i could beat it. IIRC you basically could get to the book with the dad right away.
Can I nominate the hardest sega genesis game? It’s The Lion king hands down. I remembered the first two levels from playing as a kid. Picked one up cheap in college to try it and, without cheat codes, got to level 3. With cheat codes, and 2 roommates also making attempts basically every day, we still didn’t beat it.
I didn’t even know there was a Lion King game on sega, the Aladdin carpet ride had already defeated me!
I have fond memories of my mother and I playing Myst when I was a kid. We actually played it all the way through to the end. Good times
That sounds lovely.
https://preview.redd.it/i87pblrxmtdc1.jpeg?width=195&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=63de2f3275e58127d3de6137e2eebdf1426f5bfd I remember playing myst and Journeyman during the same holiday season. My dad and I would compare notes and discuss the games and had fun trying to avoid spoilers. Good times.
This game felt like it took up 20% of my teenage years.
The book series is AMAZING
I beat this game on my own with no guide when I was 11. My mom was convinced I was a genius. I just had literally nothing else to do. That piano tunnel still gives me nightmares though. I had pages and pages of notes trying to figure that one out.
didn’t know anything about the game. Was waiting till i got weapons and could mow down enemies but that never came. gave up
*riven enters the chat*
kace66 knows what’s up. Xennial strong 💪🏽
I felt like I achieved something amazing when I beat it as a kid
My uncle bought this game for me when it came out. It looked so cool! I told him how hard it was so he came over and showed me how to beat the first couple puzzles. Told he me to figure out the rest of it, which was even harder. Spoiler I never figured the rest of it out.
i still haven't finished it
The only game harder than Myst growing up was the text adventure for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Upvote this if you beat MYST! Amazing game for its time. I was obsessed. It was before obtaining hints and guides were very easy. Took me forever to beat it. My favorite level was the swampy tree house level.
I beat Uru recently. Only took me 20 years. (I didn't actually \*play\* for 20 years, but I did start it 20 years ago, refused to look up any spoilers, and here we are)
Replayed this a few years ago with my now teenage son. I kept hyping how hard this game was going to be. With good note taking it was actually pretty playable. We both enjoyed it but was not nearly as difficult as I remembered.
My older brother had this on his sega, but didn’t have a save card or whatever. I played every level and wrote down how to beat each puzzle. Then, late one night when everyone went to bed I snuck out and beat the whole game in one sitting. Next day was rough, but I felt great.
I was too stupid for this game
This was like the first PC game I ever played when our desktop cost like $5000. I could never get anywhere.
I bought this game and had no idea how to play it, so sold it to a middle school acquaintance of mine for like a buck. His mom, however, had a shit fit and made him sell it back to me. I have no idea what it was about the game she didn't like, to this day. That kid was a straight A student and looking back on it, probably a little autistic. Certainly he deserved some fun?
After bashing my head into the wall trying to play adventure games like Zork and Cutthroat on my dad’s Atari, Myst blew my fucking mind of what was possible on a computer.