First time playing Myst stories | Forums

[Mystfr33k]

Hey, all... I just started the single player version of Uru last week, and am looking forward to the online experience... although the whole experience of interacting with other player characters is new to me. I have bought each Myst incarnation the day they became available. I played Myst (the original) on a Macintosh Plus with a whopping 1 MB RAM and a 9-inch greyscale monitor. After years of playing text-based games (Zork series), Myst was this brand-new phenomenon. Robyn and Rand Miller were geniuses. I finished the game in about a week's time over Christmas break between semesters in grad. school. All of us "Mysties" felt as though we were part of something great. We felt like we were part of an extended family (the Millers and other creators of the Myst worlds). Admittedly, when control over the Myst storyline was given to Ubisoft, I feared it would lose that certain quality. Uru has restored my faith in the story of Atrus and the linking books.

So... I'd love to read some other stories of your Myst adventures!

"Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows him?"
-Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars

[Mystfr33k]

Hey, all... I just started the single player version of Uru last week, and am looking forward to the online experience... although the whole experience of interacting with other player characters is new to me. I have bought each Myst incarnation the day they became available. I played Myst (the original) on a Macintosh Plus with a whopping 1 MB RAM and a 9-inch greyscale monitor. After years of playing text-based games (Zork series), Myst was this brand-new phenomenon. Robyn and Rand Miller were geniuses. I finished the game in about a week's time over Christmas break between semesters in grad. school. All of us "Mysties" felt as though we were part of something great. We felt like we were part of an extended family (the Millers and other creators of the Myst worlds). Admittedly, when control over the Myst storyline was given to Ubisoft, I feared it would lose that certain quality. Uru has restored my faith in the story of Atrus and the linking books.

So... I'd love to read some other stories of your Myst adventures!

"Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows him?"
-Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars

[jfchandler]

Was working for Wal-Mart corporate designing test stores, well not whole stores, just the computer center. In most Wal-Mart's it's wedged in with the Electronics, but in the few stores I designed, we made it a separate entity.

So there I was, supervising the installation of some shelving units. And I saw the CD on the counter, someone returned it. So I went over to the Packard Bell they had there and started playing.

Needless to say it took me 2 weeks to finish the center...and 2 weeks to finish Myst. I was in love at first sight. Almost all designers I knew had the same feeling. It's just nice to see something that represents beauty instead of death.

JFC

'I'm in an URU state of mind'

[Mystfr33k]

So you played the version of Myst that was revamped so that a Windows box could handle it. The only other computer game I've played that even comes close to the "well-written story" and RPG experience in my opinion was Baldur's Gate II and III: Shadows of Ahm and Throne of Baal. I played the multiplayer versions of those. Not online, but on a home computer network. You and I can't be the only ones with first-time Myst stories.

"Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows him?"
-Obi-wan Kenobi, Star Wars

[Fyrehawk]

I was in grade school, and I finagled my teacher into letting me play it during free study time, citing it to be an "educational game".
It is, though.

Cheers.


"There is a thin line between insanity and genius. I have erased this line".
--Oscar Levant

[San_Sapient]

Yea, those were the days... I was obsessed. I got my copy in the box for my Soundblaster card which I was about to install in my 486. I was worried I didn't have enough ram. I didn't, but for some reason it worked anyway. I remember for a whole month (I'm slow) I thought about nothing but Myst both at work and home. "Rents due?! ...leave me alone, I'm trying to get out of the Mechanical age!!!",
"My mothers on the phone? Tell her I'll return her calls when I've finished navigating my way through this damned tram tunnel!!!"
"Stick my dinner in the fridge, I'll have it around 4:00AM!,... no, make that breakfast time!"...and so on.
After I finished I immediately played through it 3 or 4 more times... (but not in a row...I had to finish the Journeyman Project first!)
What astonshed me most about Myst was its sountrack. I still have my separate coy of the soundtrack for Myst and play it often. It is breathtaking! I'm always reminded of my experiences in Myst through being swept away by Robyn Miller's moody riffs... In fact I put Myst's success squarely in that soundtracks hands, without it Myst wouldn't have had the same success imo. I can only hope there will be some awesome music in Uru and the online lands. (I haven't bought it yet)
Ahhh...those were the days....
*as I kick back and dream...*

[Elspet]

Well, I don't want to evangalize everywhere I write, and I've done this already in another thread today!

But yes, I was an Infocom player. And I had tried a few first-person "adventure" games, and they had seemed so flat, so pointless, compared to the best of Infocom. I pretty much shunned the new genre, saying (and I still think it's fundamentally true) that no artist or graphics engine can replace the sound and graphics card of the reader's mind.

MYST had been out for the PC for a while, maybe even a year. A sister-in-law who isn't much of a gamer played it, and sang its praises to me so evocatively that I had to try it. I loaded it up braced for dissapointment, knowing that it wouldn't compare to text games in terms of compelling plot, tantalizing backstory, and emotionally difficult decisions.

Whoba.

Everything I missed from the old text games was there. The sense of story was overwhelming, the in-game feeling that solving the puzzles really mattered was there. The depopulated nature of the game was a brilliant workaround; it would be quite some time before "live" characters would be convincing in computer games, and until we go really-truly live in URU, even now they tend to be a bit artificial because you can't truly interact with them.

URU has added the one thing I really missed. The Infocom interpreter was very good at anticipating and having responses, however brief (though sometimes hilariou) to game-irrelevant actions. Like "scream" or "laugh". I don't think there is any practical use for control-1 through control-6 in URU Prime. I think they only gave us those for fun. And I use them all the time.

I've said it elsewhere: MYST redeemed an entire genre on which I had given up.

[tayeowen]

The Spokesman Review had a feature article on Cyan and an interview with the Miller brothers. I was intrigued by what I read so I went out and got the game when it came out.

I'm really not much of a gamer. I have a brother-in-law who was tres into computers though and I remember playing a very crude tennis-like game on his set, oh, back in the 70's or early 80's, I think: a cursor on either side of the screen that you used to bat a square "ball" back and forth; believe it or not, that's what passed for "fun" (what's even funnier, it actually WAS fun!). Anyway, I didn't actually join in the computer revolution til I left my ex and moved to town and got a house with real electricity instead of batteries and solar panels. Even then, I only used it for the word processor and didn't get on-line til 5 or 6 years ago. Alas, I would've signed up for URU beta testing but only left my dial-up world 2 months ago....

[This message was edited by tayeowen on Sat December 06 2003 at 12:19 AM.]

[Srikandi]

Tayeowen: that tennis-like game was "pong". I used to go to bus terminals just to play the arcade version... that was before there were video arcades. (Later I upgraded to Ms. Pac-man, which you could sometimes play on a glass-topped table in a bar... anyone remember that?)

Anyway, don't remember exactly why I first got Myst... I was an old Infocom fan too... but I do remember playing it, and how awed I was by the graphics, especially the water and the trees (Channelwood was my favorite Age), and the darkness of the story hiding in all this beauty. I have to say that looking at the DVD version now I'm pretty amazed at how my expectations have changed!

[tayeowen]

Yes, it's been quite a long road between 'pong' and 'uru'. I feel like an old fogey compared to all the youngsters around here... But think what the myst series will look like 30 years from now! We can reminisce about how crude uru was!