Myst

Myst is a first-person graphic adventure created by Cyan and published by Brøderbund in 1993 for Macintosh and Windows 3x.

The game was incredibly successful, and it was ported later to 3DO, Amiga, CD-i, Playstation, SEGA Saturn, and many other platforms.

The player controls The Stranger, magically transported into the Myst island. He will have to explore the island and solve its many mysteries and puzzles. Somehow it reminds me of an interactive book rather than a video game. There are also several possible endings, depending on the player's choices.

The adventure, designed by two brothers, Rand and Robyn Miller, was utterly different from other titles seen until then. It was based on static scenes, beautifully rendered in 3D. There was no inventory, and there were no items to collect. All puzzles were based on mechanisms and objects that the player need to manipulate. The only interaction is the click of the mouse cursor. There is no violence, enemies, or ways to die in this game. The Miller brothers - designers of children's titles until then - wanted an adventure that everyone could play: a game for non-gamers.

The scenes were pre-rendered because the hardware available at the time could have never generated graphics like this in real-time. Despite the lack of animation (apart from short cutscenes), the result was excellent: it was the best 3D visuals ever seen on a video game. Consider that there are 2500 different locations in the game; each one of them is like a beautiful painting. Of course, the only way to store all these images was the use of a CD-ROM, so Myst was one of the first games exclusively on CD. It was why many people purchased a CD-ROM drive in the '90s.

The game reviews were positive, even if some reviewers criticized the lack of interaction or the not-so-advanced game engine. But positive reviews or not, Myst was an impressive commercial success. Before 2000, it sold more than six mln units, becoming the top-selling video game of the '90s. But most of all, Myst is the title that demonstrated that video games could be art.