Saturday Crapshoot: Private Eye

Every week, Richard Cobbett rolls the dice to bring you an obscure slice of gaming history, from lost gems to weapons grade atrocities. This week, who’s in the mood for something… noirishing?

The inevitable sound of smoky jazz echoes down the dark Los Angeles street. Somewhere, a man falls to the ground with an ice-pick in his neck. A damsel puts the finishing touches to her look of mock distress. A crucial clue is picked up off the floor and torn up by a genre-savvy plotter. And in his dark, cramped office, Philip Marlowe waits to be told the lie that’ll pull him into the middle of it all.

Yep. It’s time to head back to the golden age of detectives and take a look at a game that – while no classic by any stretch – deserves better than to languish in its current obscurity.

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Saturday Crapshoot: Pyst

Myst, as everyone who ignores people who are wrong can tell you, is a festering boil upon the gaming industry, found just off to the side of adventuring’s anus, on the itchiest part of point and click’s clammiest buttock. It landed in 1993, with its pretty graphics instantly bedazzling all who gazed upon it, especially those who found a copy stuffed with their first CD drive or nestled in the packaging of their printer for reasons that still escape all comprehension. To this day, it has armies of admirers. Unrelated, there are millions of people whose idea of a good time is watching obese members of the opposite sex bathing in porridge to the tunes of Barry Manilow. Probably. In conclusion, Myst is rubbish.

But did you ever wonder what happened to scenic Myst Island after some four million players had tramped across it? Of course not. But if you had, Pyst might just have been your answer…

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