Released: September 24, 1993. Developer: Cyan. Publisher: Brøderbund Software.
It's hard to find a game simulataneously as successful and as misunderstood as . Cyan's landmark adventure is both revered and reviled in different quarters of the gaming industry. As the un-(serious theme, no inventory) and the anti-(serene pace, nobody dies), Myst seriously challenged the gaming status quo of the early 1990s.
This dark-horse title from the forests of Washington represented everything that hated, and everything that hard-core adventure fans resented. Nevertheless, it sold 6 million copies.
In a in Wired, Jon Carroll wrote, "The reason for all the success was stunning in its simplicity: Myst was good. Myst was better than anything anyone had ever seen. Myst was beautiful, complicated, emotional, dark, intelligent, absorbing. It was the only thing like itself; it had invented its own category."
Today, it's easy to dismiss Myst as a glorified slide show. But that's actually the core of Myst's brilliance: A small group of people with a tiny budget managed to weave a series of beautiful pictures and puzzles into an utterly compelling and enveloping experience that transcended the limitations of the budding CD-ROM medium. That kind of magic makes the best computer games.