Cyan just released a major update to Myst that makes it run 50 percent faster on M1
Macs.
Myst is one of the few games from my childhood I liked enough to make me drop thirty bucks
on a remake, to relive some of the memories of the first time I played Myst with my entire
family. I remember watching all the game's postage-stamp-sized videos on an old Performa.
The game's pre-rendered environments and eerily-beautiful soundtrack transported my mind off to distant
places in a way no computer game had ever done before. Or really, since. Myst IV was
pretty good, but nothing beats the original.
I didn't see any other gameplay videos, so I recorded this directly on my M1 Mac mini,
and I figured I'd talk a little bit about the graphics quality, the controls, and what's
changed since the first time I played it, gosh, 25 years ago now!
The first thing I'll note is that I'm using iShowU Instant to do the screen recording.
This first portion is in 4K, and the screen recording takes a little extra overhead. It's
slightly less choppy if I play without screen recording, but it still isn't really smooth
on my M1 Mac.
Later on I'll switch to playing in 720p upscaled, with some of the graphics settings turned
on low. It's still perfectly playable either way, but it doesn't have that extra layer of sharpness
you get with 4K, if you have the hardware to support it.
Some of the controls are a bit different. With the ability to walk around, I can go
into more areas besides the path the original game set you on. It's actually easier to find
some of the more hidden parts of the Myst worlds because you don't have to hover your
mouse on every part of the screen every single frame!
The other helpful addition is a 'screenshot' system. I know my family would've killed to
have that back in the 90s; we had a notebook, and we'd have one family member 'driving'
Myst. Then another would be on notebook duty, jotting down any important diagrams or notes.
The graphics overall are good, but they don't hold up against any kind of modern game design.
It does make it pleasant to play though on a modern Mac with a 4K or 5K display, though!
Anyways, I wanted to record some actual gameplay on an M1 Mac, since nobody else seems to have
done it yet, but really, I used this video as an excuse to buy the game again, since
it holds a special place in my heart.
[I'll let you watch and listen to the game for a minute, at 4K, then I'll switch to upscaled 720p.]
Hopefully this little video was helpful to show how far Myst has come, and more specifically
how well it runs on an M1 Mac mini. Other M1 Macs should run it pretty much the same,
though the lower-end Macs like the MacBook Air might throttle a little bit if you keep
the settings high and play it for a while.
Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling!