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How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica · 2M views · 2020-01-28 · 23:24

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Overview

Myst co-creator Rand Miller recounts how the HyperCard-built game struggled to run on 1x CD-ROM drives. He and his brother Robyn compressed image and audio data heavily to get acceptable performance. Part of Ars Technica's War Stories series.

On Hacker News

HN commenters point to it as the first-person story of how Myst grew out of HyperCard and fit on CD-ROM, especially in threads about HyperCard and retro game constraints.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2020–2024

Topics

Game history & retro gamingGame programming & engines
Search by tags
mysthypercardcd-romrand millerretro games

What people said

nodesocket · 2020-03 · Strong recommendation

Related, the video How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM[1] is actually more fascinating and entertaining in my opinion. [1] [VIDEO]

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rideontime · 2023-07 · Recommendation

CD-ROM didn't make Myst a no-brainer, as Rand Miller discusses in this excellent Ars Technica piece: [VIDEO] More info in the extended cut starting at this timestamp: [LINK]

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clusmore · 2023-01 · Recommendation

If you want to hear more about this from the man himself, Rand Miller has a great video with Ars Technica: [VIDEO] And extended edition: [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Ars Technica, played through YouTube.

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