myst =(

[Eriol]

now that myst is officially over (im very upset about that by the way) does anyone know of any games which are just as good storyline, puzzles and all.

[Nuclear Krusader]

The 7th Guest, if you manage to find it, that is. If you do, it's a jolly good find.

[Eriol]

thanks, I have looked unfortunatly the windows version of that is very hard to find. This DOS one is all over ebay.
Anyone have any more recently released suggestions or is it basically a dead genre.

[Nuclear Krusader]

It *is* a dead genre. You can grab the DOS version, provided it can be made run on XP, or you have an auld computer running W9x. Both The 7th Guest and its sequel, the 11th Hour are fabulous games. Get them while they're still selling, auld boy.

[Eriol]

I defintily want to try the 7th guest, what would I need to do to get the DOS version to work on XP.

***A moment of silence please for the death of this great gaming genre, may it never be forgotten***

[Nuclear Krusader]

It can be jolly tricky. You need to setup the game in the Compatibility Wizard, and most prolly it'll run without sound. Keep looking for the Windows version if you don't have a secondary auld PC.

S'posedly DOSBox would let you run it with sound, but that POS is slow as a snail overdosed with tylenol.

[juppy]

If you're running XP you might want to avoid the DOS version. I've got the DOS versions of both the 7th Guest and the 11th Hour and tried a few months ago to get them to run on my XP machine and I failed miserably, even using compatibility modes and anything else I could think of. I couldn't even get Dosbox to accept it and run it slowly. It would crash back to the desktop every time. As I recall it had problems with the Groovie engine that those games use. There is supposed to be a patch available that ports it over to use DirectX instead, but I never could find it to see if it'd work or not. I heard its performance was rather shaky anyway. I'm not saying I'm the master of setting these things up either, because I know I'm not, but I've gotten rather good at it over the years and this is definitely one I couldn't get going. Up to you though if you want to try it.

[pam123]

now that myst is officially over (im very upset about that by the way) does anyone know of any games which are just as good storyline, puzzles and all.

Adventure games with good story lines and good puzzles?
The Longest Journey
Grim Fandango
Syberia and Syberia 2
Indigo Blue
Schizm ( hard to find)
Oblivion ( due out sometime this spring)

edit : almost forgot, if you see "Psycohnauts" just grab it and dance for joy.

[Eriol]

Thanks Pam

[Nuclear Krusader]

Eriol, I strongly suggest you build a secondary PC and load Win98 on it, so you can enjoy all the auldies. It would also be a learning project.

The death of the genre has only turned this defunct games into instant classics. Check out Darkseed, Chronomaster, and more at http://www.the-underdogs.org/

[Eriol]

thats a very good idea, and it wouldnt be that expensive

[Saba]

I just finished the dos version of 7th guest.. and ran it on my xp system using the dosbox 0.63. Had no trouble with installation or running it with the configuration file as it came. I transferred the cd files to the harddrive.

Have just loaded 11th hour and did have trouble initially with it. Changed the config file to indicate VESA instead of VGA. Also need to load MSCDEX, so mount the cd as "mount D D:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0 -ioctl"

My XP is running on Dell Inspiron 9100 -P4 2.8ghz, 512meg, 64meg video.

BTW, I have run DOSbox 0.63 on my Pii 333 laptop (win98) for 7th guest. Worked slowly, but the cycles needed to be set at 1500 and frameskip=5 in order to get the sound to stop skipping. Running on the P4 was a more delightful experience (cycles=9000 frameskip=0).

Good luck.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Thanks for the tip with the cycles, Saba, maybe now I'll be able to run Chronomaster.

[tomster2300]

Was the last myst any good? (Didn't one come out recently?). I never played the first one - is the newest one appropriate for a 10 year old? I might get it for my brother if it is.

[Eriol]

The only problem I had with the newest myst was that they went away from using real actors to having computer generated ones (although I guess technically this was the most advanced version), I really did enjoy having the real time actors from games 2-4.

By appropriate for a 10 year old do you mean difficulty or risque? There certaintly is nothing offensive about it, but I think it might be a too hard for someone so young. I would recommend tring the original Myst first and seeing if he likes that one.

[tomster2300]

Both. While it would certainly be challenging to him, I believe it is within his capabilities. He's exceptionally bright for his age, and a very accomplished problem solver. He has more common sense than some people I know as well. If he can't figure it out there's always the internet as well.

Remember before the internet when we had to call toll telephone numbers which supposedly provided hints for games? I wonder how much money those things made. It was either that or buy a strategy guide, and even they were in short supply back in the day. That was back when I was little and my parents were excited about computer games. They would sit and try to beat it longer than I would at times. We never were too keen on calling those numbers because they charged an arm and a leg a minute and you were put on hold forever. Never could beat King's Quest...

My mom tells me stories of how my dad used to stay up nights and play the original Mario Brothers when the Nintendo first came out. It's kind of scary to think that some form of video / pc gaming has always existed while I've been alive (albeit very new when I came on the scene - video games at least).

Was the original Myst Windows based or DOS?

[Eriol]

Its windows, and you can get it pretty cheap
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00002Z72E/sr=8-5/qid=1140154757/ref=pd_bbs_5/002-8895900-9048049?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

I believe the most challenging part of Myst is the nonlinearness of it, there's no set path and generally no direction on what to do next. However it is gorgeous.

As far as difficulty, try it and see how he does. Worst case it'll be too hard and he'll have to wait till his a little older.

[RazorDX]

Look for a program called Dosbox. It is used to emulate DOS and run old DOS games in any version of Windows. Works great for old abandonware games.