Myst gives the CD-ROM drive a reason to exist
Cyan's puzzle game presented a deserted island as pre-rendered still images, with no combat, no enemies and no way to die. Published by Broderbund, it became the decade's best-selling computer game and a standing argument for buying a disc drive.
Initial Macintosh release; a Windows version followed the next year
Entry 80 of 164 in the record
What happened
The technique was a compromise turned into a style. Rendering three-dimensional scenes in real time was impossible on the machines of the day, so the brothers who built the game rendered each viewpoint in advance and let players click from one still image to the next. A disc held enough data for hundreds of these views, plus ambient sound and short video clips of actors. The island's machinery, books and hidden mechanisms had to be understood by observation, since the game offered no instructions and very little text.
Its audience was not the one publishers expected. Buyers included people who had never played a game and who found an unhurried, non-violent world of puzzles and atmosphere far more inviting than anything on a console, and the game sold steadily for years rather than in a launch spike. Computer retailers used it to move drives and multimedia bundles, and it became the title most often cited when the industry argued that compact discs were more than a cheaper floppy.
Reaction inside the field split immediately and stayed split. Admirers pointed to the atmosphere, the restraint and a world that respected the player's patience. Detractors called it a slideshow and complained that its puzzles rewarded exhaustive clicking. Both readings carried into the long argument about narrative games that followed. The commercial record, at least, is not disputed: for most of the 1990s no computer game sold more copies than this one.
The world at the time
CD-ROM drives were expensive additions most computer owners did not yet have, and the software offered for them ran mainly to reference works and demonstration discs. Real-time three-dimensional graphics were confined to arcades and simple corridor games. The computer game audience was widely assumed to be young, male and interested chiefly in action or simulation.
Historical significance
A quiet puzzle game with no combat outsold everything else on personal computers for most of a decade, which forced publishers to notice an audience beyond their assumptions. It also demonstrated what optical storage was actually good for, and its pre-rendered approach became a common way to imply three dimensions.
What it changed
Drive sales climbed and full-motion video briefly became a publishing fashion, most of it far worse than this. Sequels and novels extended the setting, and the approach influenced a generation of atmospheric first-person exploration games. Induction into a museum hall of fame decades later reflected a broad reassessment of the game's standing.
Sources consulted
- Myst, World Video Game Hall of Fame
- Replay: The History of Video Games
- The Ultimate History of Video Games
Listed sources support the facts in this entry. Wording throughout is original to this archive. Read more about how entries are researched in sources and methodology.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026. Report a correction