Trivia / Myst

• Acting for Two: In the first game, Rand Miller plays both Atrus and his son Achenar.
• Amateur Cast: Cyan did not have the money to hire actors so Rand and Robyn Miller played all the roles themselves. After Myst became a bestseller, Cyan was able to afford professional actors for later games (although Rand continued to play Atrus for the sake of continuity and because fans would not accept anyone else in the role).
• Blooper Reel: The "Making of Myst" video includes a few clips of Rand and Robyn goofing up their performances as Sirrus and Achenar.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The author of the 1995 strategy guide Myst: Strategies and Secrets mistakenly believed that Selenitic and Everdunes were the same Age (apparently due to Selenitic's desert-like terrain). A close reading of Atrus' journals makes it clear that Everdunes was a separate Age (one of many destroyed by Sirrus and Achenar).
• Canon Discontinuity: In 2018, the original realMyst was declared non-canon by Cyan, and was removed from GOG.com within July of that year.
• Creator Backlash: The Miller brothers have expressed their regrets for the underground mazerunner puzzle in the Selenitic Age, saying they didn't expect anybody to actually map that puzzle out (the idea was for you to listen to the sounds and use Trial-and-Error Gameplay to figure out which cardinal direction the sounds meant, but a number of people missed the hint).
• Disowned Adaptation: Cyan did not care for the Dark Horse Comics story based on the game. It made several mistakes, including getting Sirrus and Achenar mixed up. Dark Horse refused to make any corrections and Cyan decided to cancel any further stories.
• Dummied Out: The original game has an unused screen showing the small checkerboard in Sirrus' room in the Mechanical Age opened to show a music box mechanism. This was finally implemented in realMyst: Masterpiece Edition.
• Follow the Leader: Kicked off a slew of first-person adventure puzzle games. Even on This Very Wiki, see how many 1990s adventure games are called "Myst-like". For example: Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Blue Lacuna, Dust: A Tale of the Wired West, Gadget: Past as Future, Lighthouse: The Dark Being, Manhunter, Mission Critical, Obsidian, The Dame Was Loaded, The Journeyman Project, The Tale of Orpheo's Curse, The Witness, Timelapse, Alida The Enigmatic Giant, The Crystal Key, Morpheus, Zork Nemesis.
• Identical Grandson: Catherine's voice in Riven was dubbed-over by Rengin Altay. Her daughter Yeesha, as an adult, is voiced by the same person in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Myst V: End of Ages.
• Killer App: Originally, it was one of the selling points of the Mac. And when it was finally ported to the PC, PC owners actually bought a sound card and a CD-ROM drive along with the game^note The latter was necessary as the game only came on CD-ROM, the former was necessary to enjoy the game fully since a typical PC of the era only had the basic internal beeper, or if you were lucky an FM synthesis card like the AdLib. Also, sound cards of the era typically included a built in proprietary CD-ROM controller, as IDE CD-ROM drives wouldn't come into existence for several years, and the only alternative were SCSI drives that required yet another expensive controller card. It also caused PC owners to buy a mouse and a copy of Windows if their PC was old enough to not come with it. Microsoft conveniently sold a bundle that included both for people who wanted to upgrade from plain MS-DOS. In other words, it was the killer app that nudged the PC towards the built in audio and multimedia path that it is following today. Most CD-ROM titles prior to Myst sold poorly due to PC owners' mindset (that sound and CD-ROM drives were unnecessary luxuries) of the period. Many CD-ROM releases of the era were simply Compilation Rereleases or "enhanced" re-releases of existing games that were also sold on floppy that didn't really offer anything new. Myst was one of the first games to be released exclusively on CD, had full-motion video, and had smashing reviews that coaxed computer owners to check it out.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The 25th Anniversary Edition collected all official games together for the first time, in addition to offering some high-value feelies to patrons via Kickstarter. For posterity, these include a replica Myst book, the higher-cost version of which contains a screen imitating a linking panel; a replica of Gehn's pen and Inkwell from Riven; and an original Riven concept design sketch. The collection was limited by time rather than number, expiring forever after the Kickstarter ended.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Catherine is played by Sheila Goold in Riven and Maria Galante in Exile.
  • The brothers Sirrus and Achenar are played by the brothers Rand and Robin Miller in the first game and Brian Wrench and Guy Sprung in Revelation.
• Port Overdosed: Perhaps the most widely-ported graphical adventure game in history.
• Real-Life Relative: In the first game, the brothers Sirrus and Achenar are played by real life brothers Rand and Robyn Miller. Rand also played (voiced, in End of Ages) their father, Atrus, in all games. Incidentally, the first game is the only one in the series where every character is a member of Atrus' family (unless one considers the Stranger to be a character).
• Sleeper Hit: Rand and Robyn both initially felt even reaching 100,000 copies sold would be a dream come true. Not only did it reach that goal within months, it kept going and going until it took the throne of the best selling computer game ever at that time.
• Troubled Production: Rand Miller gave a quite stress-inducing interview in 2020 about how the game’s unprecedented use of constant sound on top of its intensive graphics pushed the limits of the CD-ROM to their breaking point, and required him and Robyn to come up with a whole new coding process. Over the five years it took to put the game together, they had no idea if it would actually work until they actually booted up the finished disc, and he says outright that if they ever let themselves think about how they were potentially wasting years of their lives, they likely would have quit that second.
• Uncredited Role: Rand and Robyn Miller were not credited as actors in the original game, which could explain why some people were surprised to learn that Atrus and Achenar were played by the same person.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, players were going to travel to the various Ages using magic paintings or exotic machines instead of Linking Books. Both concepts evolved into the paintings in the library and the tower rotation.
  • The original design idea wasn't a hit with many publishers, until one resembling the final design was pitched to Sunsoft. Sunsoft loved the idea... but only wanted the console rights in anticipation of the SNES CD-ROM. Cyan took the PC and Mac rights to Brøderbund, and the rest is history.
  • Atrus was almost played by the Miller brothers' father Ron, as seen in this audition tape.
  • The infamous maze runner puzzle was originally meant to be a walk-through maze but that would have taken far too long to render.
  • The Millers did not originally plan to include music because they were concerned about distracting players and wanted to pretend that the Ages were real places. Robyn composed a few pieces just to be sure and found the music enhanced the overall experience greatly.
  • Early notes for the game indicate that players were supposed to find "soul tubes" instead of pages.
  • There were plans to turn Discovery Island in Walt Disney World into a real-life Myst Island, which would have been a sort of puzzle-solving attraction.
• Word of God: Possibly the most frustrating instance in any fandom ever, as Myst's Word of RAWA specifically contradicts onscreen canon. Of course, onscreen canon often contradicts itself too. RAWA also frequently point out that if fans disagree with anything he say they are free to disregard it. The creators have said that the "falling man" seen on the game's cover is meant to be Atrus, not the Stranger.
• Write What You Know: The process of creating worlds by writing books is remarkably similar to creating worlds by making games.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: One of the most ironic examples, considering the series has extremely heavy literary emphasis and themes. The original game was effectively designed first, written second — the Miller brothers would create worlds that they just thought looked cool, and then would decide on the story elements afterwards. There wasn't a huge amount of planning for what the sequels would include storywise either, especially since the first game already was a Sleeper Hit as it stood, so many of the elements in those games were made up as things went along too.

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