myst posts

Over two years ago it was reported that an independent group of filmmakers called the Mysteria Film Group had bought the movie rights to the classic adventure game Myst from its developer Cyan Worlds. Now the Hollywood blog site Deadline is reporting that the film is gettng some high powered producers as new partners.

The site reports that Hunt Lowry and Mark Johnson have now joined with Mysteria's Adrian Vanderbosch and Isaac Testerman to try to adapt the movie. Johnson is a producer of the upcoming big budget fantasy movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The goal is to find a writer to create a script for the movie before shopping the project to Hollywood movie studios, according to the report. The storyline will use the mythology from the Myst games along with content from a trilogy of Myst-based novels.

The classic DRM-free PC game web site GoG.com has been adding games from Cyan Worlds' classic Myst series for some time and today they complete their cycle with Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. This title is now being called Uru Complete Chronicles as it adds two expansion packs to the original game.

While designed as a single player adventure game, it was also supposed to be the basis for Uru Online, an MMO game that never got out of beta in its original incarnation. Gametap tried to revive the MMO version but that was also shut down a year after launch. Uru Complete Chronicles is now available for $9.99.

The DRM-free PC game download site GoG.com has added yet another game from the Myst series to its line-up of titles. This time the game is RealMyst, the 2000 released graphical remake of Cyan Worlds' first game in their best selling adventure game series.

The graphical remake turns the original 2D game into a full 3D experience which is what the developers at Cyan Worlds originally intended. While you can't play in a casino kingdom in the remake, there is now full 360 degree movement in this remake. You can purchase and download RealMyst now for just $5.99.

GoG.com continues to grow in terms of the number of publisher and developers it has brought in and the game it has added to its DRM-free library. Today the service announced that they have added Cyan Worlds to their developer family and have made their game Myst Masterpiece Edition available to download.

This is the graphically updated version of the first game in the long running and highly influential adventure game series. The game is now available to download for $5.99. GoG.com plans to add more games from Cyan Worlds to its download library in the near future including the little known children's game The Manhole in its own Masterpiece Edition.

The PC game download site Gametap updates their library of titles every Thursday and today is no except. This week they are adding the adventure game Runaway: Dream Of The Turtle for their premimum users. Also, the Rebellion-developed action game Rogue Trooper will be free to play via Gametap for the next week.

However the official GameTap blog is reporting some bad news; they are now removing nearly all of the Myst based games from their library of titles. According to the blog the surprise removal of the games was "due to an external conflict between (developer) Cyan Worlds and (publisher) Ubisoft" The one exception is RealMYST, the fully 3D remake of the original game.

On Monday we began a fond look back at the 1990s, when Star Trek was well into The Next Generation and The X-Files was our favorite way to get scared. PC games also came into their own in that decade and to prove it we picked 15 titles that were released between 1992 and 1993.

It was the time period where adventure games were all over the place and an odd PC hardware add-on called the CD-ROM would make us forget floppies. Shareware was also making a huge impact on gamers, including a little game called Doom. Let's head back about 16 or 17 years and take a look at the 1990's games that we still like to play today.

Click on the image to read more of We Love the 90s (for PC Games): 1992-1993

There have been thousands of PC games released in the past few decades but let's be honest: Most of them are not that original. Oh sure, some are professionally made and even entertaining to play but in the end very few bring anything new to the table.

There are some games, however, that attempt to break the envelope of normal gameplay and take things in new directions. Sometimes these games are big hits. Other times the ideas are used and refined by other titles even if the original game wasn't a sales success. These titles influenced many other titles since their original release.

Big Download has decided to give our picks for the top 20 most influential PC games of all time. These selections are not necessarily the best selling games ever made or even the best from a developer's point of view. However they all have elements that were original and/or popular enough to see their designs used in many other games. We are counting down from 20 to 11 today. Be here on Thursday when we reveal our selections for the top 10.

Click on the image above to continue reading about the top 20 most influential PC games (20-11)

Cyan Worlds, the developers and creators of Myst, have had a brutal 2008. Their online adventure-themed MMO Myst Online: Uru Live was shut down by its publisher Gametap earlier this year and last month Cyan let go of 50 team members who worked as QA testers. However fans of Myst Online have reason to be happy this weekend as the game has now been revived as an open source project.

Yep, you read that right. According to the game's official web site, "Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans." The developer admits having a game project like this for anyone to tinker with is "scary" but adds, "...we've poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive." There's no word on when the files for the game will be released.

[Via Massively]

In a word: yes. In a few more words: yes, and the future is already here. In a lot of words:

When people ask "Is (product/service/phenomenon) the future?" they usually mean to imply that there is a boundary to be crossed, past which things will no longer be the same as they once were. A classic example: Is VHS the future? Yes, it certainly turned out to be, because for those of you who may be too young to remember, VHS and Betamax were in a video cassette format war, and VHS came out on top, much in the same way that Blu-ray has ousted HD DVD as the new hi-def disc of choice.

However, in the context of online gaming, there is no either/or choice to make. Rather, what we're seeing is a simple add-on to the games that already exist. So instead, what's being asked here is probably "Will every future game be played online?" And the answer to that is ... maybe. Read on to find out why.

Cyan Worlds hit the mother lode with their release of their CD-Rom adventure game Myst back in 1993. The new storage format for PC games was perfect for Myst; its rich art style resonated with gamers at the time and made the original Myst the best selling PC game of all time with over 6 million copies sold (It has since been eclipsed by a number of other games like Half-Life, The Sims and World of Warcraft). Cyan and other developers created several sequels and spin-offs from the game but never achieved the success the original title received.

Now comes word that a group of independent film makers called the Mysteria Film Group are planning to create a Myst movie, with the full approval of Cyan Worlds. Indeed the movie's official web site has a note from Cyan Worlds' co-founder Rand Miller who states that he was so impressed with the film maker's presentation that Cyan decided to give them the green light, He added, " We suddenly realized that making a Myst movie was not about Hollywood and studios and cigars and agents. It was about passion."

To be clear, the Mysteria Film Group is not a massively funded enterprise but a group of enthusiastic folks who have been working on this project off and on for about four years (the game's web site has the trial and tribulations of the group's day to day tasks, including dental work). The movie's storyline is actually based on a series of Myst novels that were first published in the 1990s. Obviously with these kinds of efforts it's hard to say if this will actually come to pass (heck, even major Hollywood game-to-movie properties can get canned) but we admire that this group is pressing on with few resources to make their plans come true.