When Cyan's Myst arrived in 1993, on a single CD-ROM, it quietly dismantled every assumption about what a PC game could be. There were no lives, no score, no fail state to speak of - only a strange, beautiful island and a book that had pulled you into it.

The game sold over six million copies and stayed the best-selling PC game of all time until The Sims overtook it seven years later. Its success dragged the whole industry toward CD-ROM as a standard medium, and its pre-rendered worlds proved that atmosphere alone could carry a game.

What holds up

The puzzles are still fair by modern standards: observation beats brute force, and every solution is written somewhere in the world. The Ages - Mechanical, Channelwood, Stoneship - remain some of the most memorable locations in adventure gaming.

What doesn't

The original tank controls and slideshow navigation feel dated. The 2021 remake, Myst (2021), is the version most players should reach for today, though purists will always prefer the grainy 1993 original.

Verdict: the game that made "multimedia" mean something. Essential history, and still a fine weekend of puzzles.