impressions of myst

When I was six or seven, I beat the original Myst for the first time. My memory of playing that particular game is very vivid, and the feelings that I get when I imagine the worlds I was sent to explore are so heavy and clearly defined that they outweigh almost any memory of any real place from that period of my life. I wasn’t able to beat the entire game without any help: the three puzzles which I was unable to solve are burned clearly into my memory as frustrating failures. One involved playing piano. Being completely musically incapable, I had to have my friend’s older sister to decode some notes for me. The world of Myst became my virtual playground with puzzles more complex than monkey bars and landscapes more awe inspiring than play structures.
Needless to say, playing Myst IV was a very nostalgic experience for me. Interestingly enough, however, what I found most nostalgic about playing the game was simply watching the animation of the Cyan company logo swoop down across a white landscape of cones and prisms before forming into a letter C surrounding a gold orb. This image brought back the many, many times I had sat in anticipation, staring at this image and linking it to all of the wonders of the world locked inside its software. Looking, back I am surprised at the degree to which the logos of software companies seemed to define the experience of the game to me. I saw Cyan as a kind of god, broadcasting the glory of Myst to my home computer. Likewise, my enjoyment of Dreamwork’s The Neverhood lead me to a quasi worship of the moon and the acorn. It is in places like Dreamworks, where little boys threw acorns from the moon, I thought, that worlds like The Neverhood are possible. I wonder if, to some extent, I still revere these corporate idols who produce my media, but simply am not as acutely aware of the fantasy they are spinning in my head.
Another thing I noticed during the loading screen was that Cyan is now subtitled with the word “worlds” implying that Cyan is a producer of worlds. Indeed, I would be doubtful of this description had not Cyan succeeded in planting worlds as vivid as the one we live in deep in my memory. I find this posting to be too much involved with my personal experience. However, it is useful to have a forum to unpack my childhood memories of new media interaction.