Sometimes, we really wish that we could be flies on the walls of game company offices. Maybe we're just huge nerds (actually, that's a fact), but still, we'd love to hear the reasoning behind some of the business decisions made -- just because we're curious when it comes to those types of things.Every so often, though, we get a little insight into the industry. Most recently, MTV Multiplayer learned some things about Myst DS from it's license owner, Manny Granillo, regarding why the game was turned down by many of the "top publishers." Granillo doesn't mention which companies refused to publish the title for Nintendo's handheld, but he divulged the reasons they gave.
Gallery: Myst
Even though Myst is a very popular "brand" amongst gamers, if you will, the publishers were worried about a modern-day port. Mostly, they feared that the software would be too dated -- specifically, we guess, in terms of its looks. Yet, the game was eventually picked up for North American distribution by Empire Interactive.
While we still haven't tried out this game in the States (it comes out next week), Myst DS hasn't been well-received by critics in Europe. We don't know what that means in terms of sales, but even so, we think the "salesmen" in charge of these publishing companies might have made the right choice in denying the game.
Nevertheless, you can also expect a PSP version of Myst to show up sometime in the future, and if people buy these handheld versions, a port of the sequel Riven is also being considered.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-08-2008 @ 8:14PM
Peter S said...
Ugh, not another Myst port. It was kind of okay when it first came out, but it really is dated now. The story is okay and the controls are kind of cool, but it's old and most people have had a chance to play it by now as it was out for Windows and Mac (and should even play under some emulators in Linux for the determined). There was Myst 3D (or was it Real Myst?) which basically just changed it up slightly to work in 3D motions/controls instead of the original "click arrow to move" concept from what I remember.
Riven got a little better and the series did have some other concepts that were neat, but the original Myst just doesn't need yet another re-make. I personally hope that it's not coming out for the Wii, just so people don't have yet another game that doesn't sell well.
Of course, others' opinions may vary. I will agree that the story is cool and the addition of a new "age" to explore is kind of cool as well, but it's still another port of Myst when all's said and done.
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5-08-2008 @ 8:16PM
Peter S said...
I will say in its defense that I like the Map concept. That was something I did miss in the original Myst. Moving from screen to screen without much clue as to how you got there gets old sometimes and with the extremely similar (pretty , but similar) backgrounds in the original, it was very easy to get turned around.
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5-08-2008 @ 10:06PM
Simon said...
Having never played the original, I was excited to play this game. Then i played it. The graphics are grainy, tiny and, well, just shit. I managed to turn on the holographic thing by the dock by fluke, out of the corner of my eye when the DS was held at an odd angle with light shining on it I see the switch, in an area that i had peviously tapped and tapped at. To actually click/tap on the switch, i had to tap the exact pixel (yes, a single pixel) before anything would happen.
I gave up in frustration, not because it was hard, but because the shitty graphics made the game nearly impossible to play.
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5-09-2008 @ 12:04AM
Mike said...
I think many publishers passed because not because MYST is a bad game, but it's been ported to death. PC, Mac, PSone, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar CD, 3DO, Amiga, Philips CDi, and probably a couple others. Oh, and it was "remastered", then re-done in realtime 3D as realMYST.
Dithering and scaling the graphics to fit on one of the DS's puny 256x192 screens probably had a lot to with it, too.
Considering that the DS appeals to a wide age range, I don't think it will sell horribly, but the game has been done to death... so the receptive audience is probably pretty limited.
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5-09-2008 @ 2:39AM
ecco6t9 said...
In the end it was shunned due to being a bad port.
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5-09-2008 @ 3:11PM
bubblejet said...
Is it out in the U.S. yet? I bought it last January in the U.K. and it was unplayable. As in, there's this one part where my game always freezes, and it just stops. The graphics were buggy, basically the whole experience was just awful.
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