Techtite's Macintosh Game Reviews!

"...it has become common practice lately to take classic games and revise them with modern technology. Often this is done with classic 2D arcade games like Frogger and Centipede but why not Myst?"

---from the review

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Was the original Myst a good game, or "marketed properly"...? I always remember the opinion of a feature article at the now defunct internet game site, Daily Radar, which not only flamed Myst in one of their last-ever, feature articles; they insisted it was never a good game in the first place, 8 million copies sold, or not. Their claim was that Myst was actually a bad game, with the good fortune of a clever marketing campaign. However, if this was a case of how, as they say, "bad games sell if they're marketed properly," why would Myst be such a phenomenon? Hate it or love it, this was the game that set the mold for CD-ROM gaming back in the day. Until this game came out, even Doom was offered on floppy discs. This game sold 8 million copies, ergo 8 million people suddenly had CD-ROM drives and ergo, the CD-ROM revolution was born. It's all in the way you look at it. For me, Myst will always be a major staple in gaming...and a good one.

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RealMyst

Click on picture to order this game (Mac version)

A Techtite Review

You may not know this; but Myst was native to Macintosh, not the PC. The two game-designer brothers who created Myst formerly made games for their young children on Mac computers, using what at the time was a popular, user-friendly, Mac-only programming engine called Hypercard. The resulting two children's games, Manhole and Cosmic Osmo, received rave reviews by child and parent alike. By 1993, they came out with Myst, to answer the plea for a similar game for an older gamer. Then the game was ported to PC...and the rest is history.

While this is a slightly overdone abbreviation of the background to Myst, it is far more accurate --and in opposition-- to all the negative rumors hovering over Myst in the recent past. It was hardly just a "bad" game sold under a clever marketing campaign. Nor was it single-handedly responsible for changing adventure games for the worse. It wasn't even the first adventure game to reduce the text parser to the quickly dreaded, mouse-only-interface (a move that some say was the first nail in the coffin for the graphic adventure genre). Just FYI: the first mouse-only game was Sierra's King's Quest V; three years before Myst was even released. The point is; Myst was hardly as bad as all that. In fact, it was actually quite good, back in the day.

Jump ahead nearly a decade, when it is common practice to take classic games and revise them with modern technology. Often this is done with classic 1980's 2D arcade games like Frogger and Centipede...but why not Myst? Imagine strolling through the worlds of Myst, with full 360 degree freedom of movement, outside the confines of its former slide-show-only format. The concept is extraordinary. 

Such is the premise to realMyst; the exact same game, only this time with a 3D-accelerated graphic game engine. This allows full freedom of movement throughout your journey, in any direction you wish. There's even an "improved ending," where you visit a totally new realm called "Rime," which links the original game's storyline more fluidly with the 1997 sequel, Riven. Myst fans should be quite pleased.

It's the people who are more intrigued at the latest and greatest in game design, who will be far less impressed. While the original 1993 game was a revolution in game design --arguably, the spark that initiated CD-ROM gaming itself-- realMyst seems to be taking several steps backward, not forward. The 3D accelerated graphics here are practically identical to the original 1993 game, and perhaps that's half the problem. Modern games have met and exceeded these visuals, via third generation (or even later) graphics accelerator cards. The world has changed. When you imply that the world of Myst has not, the result is a concept that is quite dated.

However, graphics hardly affect a game's rating, at least not by much. Instead, it's realMyst's  requirements that drag the rating down to a small crater (the Techtite.com equivalent of a "Marginal thumbs-up"). It just doesn't seem right that a 3D game based on 1993 graphics, would have graphics card requirements stronger than some of the best modern games. While some people will say that, indeed, this game works well on a G3 iMac, take heed: nothing below a 16MB Graphics card will run realMyst. While 16MB is hardly a large number, it isn't as low as some might hope. Many people like myself are very protective of our old, colorful, first-generation iMacs, and while many games work perfectly on such iMacs, this does not work at all; the 16 Meg just isn't there.

These graphic requirements end this review with a one-two punch. On the one hand, older Macintosh computer owners would be the gamers most interested in a revised version of an old game, to play on their old Macs. On the other hand, the only computers this game works on are the newer computers, not the old ones. The problem with this is: users of more modern computers are least interested in "classic" games; they're too busy playing superior graphics games, not games based on 1993 graphic technology. Regardless of both polarized groups of gamer, diehard fans (with a compatible computer) will find realMyst a great amusement. Sadly, it's just not the amusement it could have been.

---Techtite