Episode 126: HyperCard & Myst
Added 2017-11-13 12:42:54 +0000 UTCWe've mentioned Myst and HyperCard in several episode this year, but it's always within a glancing tangent rather than a real conversion. This week, Ben Elgin and I downshift into first gear to take a proper look at these two interconnected pieces of gaming history: Apple's incredibly flexible hypertext tech, HyperCard, and Cyan's Myst, which took the platform to its ultimate limit and became the best-selling PC game of the 20th century for its trouble. Not bad for something intended to be little more than a digital rolodex.
Description: Jeremy and Ben take a deep dive into the history and concept of Apple's HyperCard and how it became a surprising platform for game development… including the best-selling PC game of the 20th century, Cyan's Myst.
Comments
I really loved this episode on Hypercard. I especially loved the discussion of Xanadu! Jeremy, going even further back from Nelson, are you familiar with Vannevar Bush's As We May Think from 1945? <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/</a>
William Wend
2017-11-27 13:02:11 +0000 UTCThis was a really great episode. I feel like I missed out not growing up in a Mac household. I think HyperCard is something I would have really enjoyed and it might have helped to get me into programming earlier than I did.
Scott Scallion
2017-11-18 21:47:51 +0000 UTCI never played any of these games, besides fooling around with the Sega Saturn version of Myst as a kid at a friend's house. But this was my favorite episode of RN East so far. I learned a lot about a realm of gaming I knew absolutely nothing about. Thanks!
Robert Negoesco
2017-11-17 15:11:43 +0000 UTCDidn't really have to be pendantic, but what would the internet be without it??? :)
Ken Hoyt
2017-11-16 21:28:29 +0000 UTCFair enough! I wasn't sure, which is why that was a question rather than a bold claim.
Jeremy Parish
2017-11-16 20:20:41 +0000 UTCAs far as I know, or else just their marketing got to me, The 7th Guest was the first CD-rom only game. I never got into Myst but love (nostalgically) T7G so I HAVE to be pendantic about it here....
Ken Hoyt
2017-11-15 19:00:17 +0000 UTCI really enjoyed this episode. Many episodes of Retronauts that I listen to are about games that I still replay or have at least revisited in the last decade, but I have never gone back to Hypercard or Myst since the mid-90s. It brought back a lot of memories from around that time. I forgot to mention in my email: after having to abandon my HyperCard game at school, I really wanted to get the program for our Mac Performa at home, but the program just cost too much. I discovered World Builder, which had become freeware by then. It had some similarities to HyperCard, in that you could do point-and-click adventure game stuff and it only used the 1-bit color, but it was specifically a program for creating adventure games with a combination of point-and-click as well as text entry with its own coding system. Some of the best World Builder games were recently put online, but before that, I emulated my favorite one eight years ago and finally gave the creator the shareware fee I wish I could have paid as a 13-year-old. He sent me a hardcopy printout of his hint guide with maps!
Brian Rude
2017-11-15 07:04:55 +0000 UTC
