The entire Myst series now plays nice with modern PCs
The last page has been written
Credit where it's due, while GOG aren't quite as retro-focused as they used to be (now playing the role of a more traditional games store) they've still got that magical touch for making older games work on newer systems. Until today, Cyan World's genre-defining Myst adventure series has been incomplete on PC.
One of the big promises of Cyan's big collector's edition kickstarter in April was that GOG would be updating the third and fourth games in the series to run nicely on modern machines. Today, they delivered in full - the story is complete, and unabridged once more.
Fans of obtuse but pretty FMV adventures can celebrate once more. Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelation are now working as intended. Previously, these games were an absolute bear to get working on modern systems, as they came from a dark era before video, software, hardware or OS standards. While plenty more games have been lost to the sands of time thanks to this particularly rocky period of PC gaming history, it's great to see another couple restored to full functioning order.
Myst III and IV were made at a time when the series name carried significant weight, so roping in some genuine talent for its overly-greenscreened FMV segments wasn't that hard. Among Myst IV's mix of lesser-known actors is Genesis front-man Peter Gabriel, and Myst III has Brad Dourif (a great, offbeat actor in his own right, and well cast in Dishonored as Piero Joplin) there to steal the show whenever he's in front of the camera.
While I'm no great fan of Myst (or point and click adventure games in general, despite growing up on a steady diet of Sierra & Lucasarts classics), it's hard to deny the importance of the series, even if its ending with the clumsy winding down of Uru Online wasn't the epilogue it deserved. While Doom was always my playground of choice, the series defined games for many through the 90s, and did its part to get people to hook CD drives up to their PCs, too.
Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelation are out now on GOG, for £10.69/$15 each. The remainder of the series has also been bundled up cheap, discounted to £14.35.