By Charles Jade
Is there anyone who doesn't remember the date, time, place, and state of undress when they saw their first pornographic image? For me, it was the early morning of Christmas, 1993, boxers only, staring in open-eyed wonder at Myst. The greatest adventure game ever made redefined the genre of adventure games. Myst made the CD-ROM famous for gaming and held the title of best-selling PC game until The Sims came along at the turn of the millennium. Now, iMyst is coming, this time for the greatest phone/media player/casual gaming device ever made.
This is a small project that probably a very few of you know about. We are porting Myst to the iPhone. Ok, before some of you start groaning, this is an outside funded project that is keeping a few developers employed... but it is really more than that. It is an interesting and fun project. This is also a very small team with three of us (which includes Derek, Rand (not Randy) and myself).
This scrap of text in the forums of Myst Online should generate both hope and fear among those who would revisit the worlds of Myst, or at least the Mechanical Age to look at the rotting monkey head in the Achenar's secret room—I jumped the first time I opened that box. The fear is that the port will fail utterly, like the DS version with horrible graphics and game play. The hope comes from it being an in-house development. The unknown is the iPhone.
Certainly, Apple's devices have the power to run Myst, at least the frame-driven version. Whether a real-time 3D version could run on the iPhone and iPod touch is an open question. The interface may also need tweaking regarding precision and multi-touch input, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem. The question will be how much time and effort Cyan can afford to put into it. If that effort is anything like the brothers Miller put into the original game, iMyst could be a showcase for casual gaming on the iPhone that puts the "real" handhelds to shame.
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