Our games were based on the worlds and the stories around them. A world away from the arcade action of the consoles of the era, Myst represented something of a gamble.Īs Rand says: We were looking at things a little bit differently. Having wangled $280,000 out of SunSoft (development on Myst eventually cost double that), the Millers began work on their opus. We were ready - we'd been talking about this for a while, about building much more story and building a goal, because previously we never had one. To cut a long story short: after a few childrens' games in between, a Japanese company approached us and asked us to do something for an older audience. So it was just whatever was in his head - there was no rhyme nor reason to it."īut the concept did eventually evolve into Myst? Yes. He went down in the manhole cover and said, 'I'll put an island here and then a sunken boat there'. There was nothing defined - Robyn was just drawing pictures as he was going and the world was defining itself. However, as Rand concedes: We didn't know what we were doing at that point.
That game became The Manhole, and was followed by the likes of Cosmic Osmo and Spelunx, each refining the template for what would be the breakthrough of Myst. It became a world instead of a book and that really defined our future for us. Once you did that there was no need to turn the page, there were no other pages. There was a manhole in the street, the manhole cover slid away, a vine grew out of it and you could go down the manhole or climb the vine. However, what actually happened somewhat set our future - Robyn never turned the page. I thought it'd be somewhat interactive and you'd turn the page and go to the next interactive stage and tell a story. He's an artist and a musician.' Robyn started on the first page of this book, which held a picture of a fire hydrant. I wanted to do that for software, but I had to convince him.
#Myst trilogy books software#
I told him we needed to write a new kind of children's software - like a good quality children's book that adults actually want to read too. A big fan of text adventures such as Zork, Rand was the driving force, having dabbled with games ever since somebody hooked me on a timeshare system and I would steal passwords out of the trash to play the games.Īccording to Rand, the partnership began when he wrote Robyn a letter.
#Myst trilogy books series#
Not entirely coincidentally, it was the work of two brothers, Robyn and Rand Miller, who began working on the game in 1991 following a modicum of success with a pioneering series of childrens' titles. The equivalent of Stonehenge (both aesthetically and in terms of pace), Myst involved a bizarre story about two brothers being imprisoned for crimes against literature.
#Myst trilogy books Pc#
An acquired taste it may have been, but the original game has shifted a staggering six million copies, arguably proving the viability of the PC as a gaming medium and helping to establish the healthy scene that we have today. While the gaming world went crazy for Sonic and Mario, it was a brave gamer who would boast of solving lateral thinking puzzles on his dad's home computer'. Devoted fans and new players alike will be delighted to have three books in this mythic saga together for the first time in one value-priced volume, which will be published in time to coincide with the long-awaited release of Myst Revelations.Arriving at a time when PC games were barely established, Myst rapidly found favour among early adopters, library users and the kind of people who keep the plastic sheeting on the back seat of their cars. The Myst Reader is a literary companion to the CD-ROM games and a compendium of the bestselling official Myst trilogy: The Book of Atrus, The Book of Ti'ana, and The Book of D'ni. Devoted fans of these surreal adventure games gather yearly at "Mysterium" (whose event sites are spreading to other countries) to exchange game strategies, share stories, and meet up with old friends. Its extraordinary success has gone on to spawn Riven, Myst III Exile, and most recently, Uru: The Ages Beyond Myst. Myst captivated the world when it was first conceived and created by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller. The award-winning Myst series is one of the most successful interactive CD-ROM computer games in history with sales of more than 12 million copies worldwide.
This omnibus edition of the hugely popular Myst trilogy is published to coincide with the release of Myst Revelations, the latest in the line of the bestselling Myst interactive CD-ROM games.
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