Your name will live forever
Periodically over the past couple of years I’ve had the urge to play through Myst again, which I haven’t seen in over a decade. The mood struck me again today, but it doesn’t look like there’s a version of the original game for OS X, so I may resort to playing it on our Windows machine. I also never played any of the sequels, although I’ve heard from a few people that Riven was good.
And then of course whenever I start thinking about Myst, I end up wanting to play other old Mac games I liked - particularly Scarab of Ra and Cosmic Osmo. Maybe even Oregon Trail and Amazon Trail. Maybe I should dig out one of the old Macs I have that never ran OS X and make a weekend project of it.
Coincidentally, I was in a similar mood about a week back, so I picked up the “WIN/MAC” Myst 10th Anniversary Collection. Unfortunately Myst: Masterpiece Edition and Riven aren’t OS X native, and I didn’t want to start with
Myst III. I’m not sure if you have a copy of Windows XP lying around, but I did, so I just downloaded the Boot Camp beta, partitioned 10 gigs on my Intel iMac and installed Windows XP there. Both the Myst: Masterpiece Edition and Riven work perfectly inside the Boot Camped XP partition.
It was quite a painless solution, and now that I’ve got my little XP partition, I’ve been popping in other Windows gems I’ve had longings for like Age of Wonders and Planescape: Torment.
I have been having this same craving as well, and have been wondering what the old CD I have was supposed to be run on…
A lot of *wicked* old apple games (like the original oregon trail) are available at http://www.virtualapple.org/
Sweet Christ Nickel, what have you done, my productivity is finished for at least a week to come.
Myst for nintendo DS is released this fall.
http://www.gamespot.com/ds/adventure/myst/index.html
I find it terribly ironic and just plain evil that an Apple II emulator supports Windows platforms only.
If you can find a Cosmic Osmo CD (which is almost impossible, and no you cannot have mine), it runs great under a 68K Mac emulator.
As for Myst, it’s a little weird because I love the series while not really liking most of the games much. Kind of like the Star Wars movies.
Myst 1 was certainly groundbreaking at the time, but really shows its age. Not really recommended.
Myst 2 was decent, but without reading the books it really doesn’t make much sense. Also, it’s pretty unique in that there is very little age-warping.
Myst 3 was actually pretty awesome (Brad Dourif!) but somewhat more linear, and certain parts were a little dull. If you’re going to play through the sequels, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start here.
Myst 4 was utter crap.
Myst 5 was also crap, but better than Myst 4. It does have that guy from MASH, though with a really weird fake Russian accent.
Uru was shipped out the door in an unbelievably buggy and unfinished state, and then it died when nobody played it. I’ve heard it has since been resurrected, and that it’s actually pretty cool now, but I’m not going to re-buy it. It was neat to finally run around D’ni exploring, but unless you’re a hardcore Myst fan you’re not going to know why that’s cool.
It is also worth noting that 4, 5, and Uru are all centered around Atrus’ daughter, Yeesha, who is one of the most annoying characters ever to appear in a computer game. At some point, she decided she was a goddess or something, and broke most of the rules of book-travel that had been carefully built up in the earlier games. Even worse, Myst 4 is set when she’s about 10 years old, and even *more* annoying.
So yeah, play Myst 3 (and maybe 2), read the books if you can find them, don’t set your expectations too high, and you’ll have a good time.