Pyst - A Complete Retrospective 

April Fools! Enjoy this overly analytical look at a parody game that is so bad that it's...bad, just bad.

Pyst: the most elaborate ragequit of all time.

It seems like Pyst’s problem is one encountered by a lot of bad parodies: disinterest in the source material. The best parodies always have a certain level of love and respect for the source material, hell even parodies made by people who hate it can produce a few good jokes, but because the team didn’t seem to care much about Myst beyond its phenomenon status and it being too hard, we ended up with like 3 jokes ACTUALLY about Myst, while the rest are a bunch of random disconnected gags they thought were funny, cause they didn’t care about Myst enough to make any proper jokes about it

At first, I thought he was a really good John Goodman impersonator. Then, I realized... That's no impersonator.

I have to say, that game looks rough to "play", but the videos of them making it left me with a big smile on my face. I used to love games like that, so I probably would have loved it as a kid. It reminds me of the Dune parody novel, Doon.

I remember seeing an LGR video on this years ago and the big thing I remember him saying that Pyst only showed off areas that you could go to without having to actually solve a puzzle

to be fair to weird al, he did ask people who created the original songs if he could parody them. Ergo the "you've made it if weird al asks to parody your song".

great to see you're doing shorts now

Well Weird Al also asked every single artist for permission. I think there's one he didn't manage to get permission for and he eventually made the song anyway cause he was so proud of the lyrics.

I actually remember when this game came out- I saw the box a couple of times at my local Software, Etc. I also remember that it went from the full priced "New Release" section to the way marked-down "Bargain" section in less than a year. I also remember going out to spend some birthday money around '97 and I saw it on sale, thought about buying it, but I ended up with Fallout instead. I'm glad I chose correctly. 10:02 In the opening scene where you're standing on the Pyst docks, there's a black car in the water with a bumper sticker that says "Chapaquiddick" [sic] which is referencing the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident in which U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, 37, drove his car off of a bridge into the Poucha pond. Kennedy managed to get out of the car and swim to safety, but his passenger, 28 year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, was trapped in the vehicle and drowned. This incident is nuts if you've never heard of it. There are ALL KINDS of theories and suspicions. Our boy little Ted is the younger brother of (then newly) assassinated president John F. Kennedy as well as a prominent member of the rich and powerful Kennedy family, and he also happens to be a raging alcoholic. As we all know, we should always trust known alcoholics when they tell us they weren't drinking when they drove their car off of a bridge. There is supposedly an hour of time missing from when Ted and Mary Jo left the party they were at. Ted said he tried to rescue her but 8 times but couldn't. He sat on the bank for 15 minutes after his heroic rescue attempts and then walked by 4 houses before getting to his friend's cottage to ask for help. It was very late, but he certainly could have woken someone up and gotten them to help him rescue her or at the very least phoned the local police. Then there were reports she didn't die of drowning but of suffocation. It's very interesting. I'm not exactly sure why they put it in the game- when this came out it would have happened like 27 years ago. There were investigations and criminal inquests afterwards, but I don't know when they were. It just seems like it would be like putting a Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky joke in a game that came out this year. Not exactly fresh. If anyone knows if there's a better reason than possibly it had popped back up in the news around the time this game was made or the authors just loved sticking it to the Kennedys I'd be curious. Also, not trying to nitpick but the car they put the bumper sticker on isn't the same make/model as Kennedy's car. He had a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88, which has long horizontal tail lights, not the tall slender ones seen here. Maybe there's a good reason, but I must have MYST it... ahahaha!

Okay, so that's what the title means! I've been perplexed by it for almost 3 decades now after seeing the box in a computer store when I was a kid. My native language is written and spoken the same way, so Pyst is pronounced very differently from English. This is the first time I've heard it spoken out loud in English and suddenly it makes sense. I'm now glad my family was broke and couldn't afford a PC at the time, or I would've wasted what little money I had on this crap just because John Goodman was on the cover.

Shockwave! Holy hell, that takes me back!

Most excellent feature Sir, really enjoyed it. Been wanting to see what PYST looked like for decades, but always fell into the "can't be bothered to set it up" category. But they did like their parody games back then, I remember "Who wants to beat up a millionaire" being another, but it's odd how comedy isn't really much of a thing within video games. The Portal games are probably the closest to get it right from an original perspective.

Myst, the only game to have more re-releases than Skyrim.

A 40-minute scripted retrospective on a 90s "comedy" FMV game. You are a braver soul than I. Bravo! I remember seeing the big box version at CompUSA and Computer City back in the day, but at a retail PC game price point, the only joke were the people that bought it. I was curious about another FMV game that reminded me of this one called a Fork in the Road. Both were bad IIRC.

It seems like the game "Trailer park Tycoon" that came out in 2002 uses a similar style of Humor but manages to actually be amusing and have fine gameplay. (i loved watching the Npcs interact with the weird nonsence of that World)

Well, if there’s only one thing to take away from this video, it’s that you certainly know how to take the Pyst out of something.

Yeah I played this as a child when it came out and it fell flat for me so I'm pretty sure I wasn't the audience. Goodman was the only highlight and to this day the "Privet... NO! Private!" line remains an inside joke with some family.

The Firesign Theatre guys are great. They're no strangers to video games either. You can hear their voices on two Intellivoice games. In fact, the iconic B-17 Bomber's bombardier voice you hear with the funny 8-bit southern drawl is the late Phil Austin. These guys had their hands in EVERYTHING we loved!

Parroty Interactive was such a weird company in the 90s. They burped out time waster CD novelties based on Star Wars, the X-Files, and even Windows 98 but had the nuance of a flamethrower. All the satire was just "wow this thing is stupid, isn't other thing cooler?" In the case of Pyst I get that they wanted to show the frustration of people who just up and quit on the main island without exploring the various dimensions but that's merely surface level context of Myst. If you truly wanted to mock Myst, you had to actually dig deeper into the game and examine the gameplay and lore, which was beyond the group's comprehension.

Fire sign theater! I grew up listening to Nick Danger all the time! Unbelievable! 💛

Oh man! This is weird cause I have actually been watching a lot of videos on Myst lately and had no idea of course that you were making this video 😂 Freakin' love this channel

God... I am just sad that I don't have a complete retrospective of the myst series to watch now :(

I had this game when it was new. One of the first games i purchased myself. Bought it with the idea that Myst was frustrating and this would make fun of it..... it wasn't a good time, but the best parts were the song, and the Making Of video.

I remember seeing Pyst on store shelves over here in Australia. I seem to recall looking at the back and not being super interested.

bro this video is dropping so much knowledge from an era I thought I knew about on me my jaw dropped

I think I saw those parody games in the bins of Video Club store circa 98-99

Oh boy another birthday present!!! Oh right I was born as a joke...

Crazy that an April fools day joke from you is still a solid 40 minute video when most people have a 5 second joke

Its crazy how these retrospectives can unlock core memories that i haven't thought of in decades. I don't think ever played pyst but the parody interactive logo brought back memories of clicking through the parody interactive star wars game when I was like 4 or 5 years old. I couldn't even read yet so i never got very far but I loved star wars and there was so much stuff to click on in the first couple screens id just sit there clicking on random stuff for hours. the game was already old by the time i got my hands on it probably around 2004ish.

Wow, this jogged some memories. Thanks for the retrospective! The review is about what I expected lol. Although I'm really glad you mentioned John Goodman's song; for years that was floating around on my computer and would randomly play when my library was on shuffle. :) Looking back now with a new perspective, it's fascinating how this is more a commentary on the phenomenon of Myst than the game itself. It's hard to state how BIG Myst was. Think Pokemon Go (near launch) in terms of reach and broad appeal. And it was mentioned briefly but Myst really was an early "Killer App." Some people didn't just get CD Roms for it, they got entire computers for it. Walking into a Best Buy, Circuit City or Future Shop guaranteed you would see little placards saying "I can run Myst!" next to some computers. I also remember salesmen and randoms just stopping to chat about the game & puzzles, hint-lines being advertised everywhere, and the giant push that it was the first "true multimedia experience." Heck, it almost certainly started the FMV craze. An entire sub-genre of games trying to be that next "true multimedia experience." Combine its push/prevalence with an elist attitude I remember some people having about the game, I can see how Pyst started to take shape. (It wasn't JUST a game to some, it was like an introspective novel compared to the Plebeian, childish arcade-y offerings of most games.) So it's a shame Pyst is basically Putt-Putt for adults. Except worst and there's not nearly enough John Goodman to carry it.

HAHAHAHA thanks for this nostalgy, i remember now this piece totally forgotten in my deep mind x)

amazing upload, I love your retrospectives regardless of topic. Though I do regularly fall asleep to the Arena/Daggerfall retrospectives as my favourites

The fact, that Myst developers didn't cared about minimum specs and also caused lots of new buyed hardware and computers, makes it even more crazier how often it got sold.

I was so unaware that pyst was even a thing that existed that for a very brief moment I was kind of hyped about myst retrospective.

Wait, this isn't Majuular. This is just Jwlar.

When I was young, I saw a copy of Pyst on a store shelf. As someone who loved Myst, I wanted it. I didn't get it, though. A while back I saw a playthrough on RU-vid and I am glad I never got it. I'd have been disappointed in it even as an immature kid.

Absolute legend.

after enjoying the Nick Knacks video about Nickelodeon's old show Livewire, the Fred Newman jumpscare here really got me

I had forgotten about this game entirely. Never got to play it, but wanted it so badly at the time 😂

My favorite Myst parody is Jon Bois' webpage of baseball player Barry Bonds leaving diary pages of trying to complete Myst

One thing I noticed was the lack of videos in Pyst documenting the downfall of the titular resort. The player character appears to have come to the island of Pyst after almost everyone else left. I'd like to see some videos in which the characters are saying stuff like "We've hit a bit of a rut in visitors, but I'm sure it'll turn around soon."

I had a few magazines around the time this came out. and they panned it. I do like the vague idea of 'millions descend on a tiny island and ruin all the puzzles', but yikes, I didn't know it was that goofy bad =D thanks for doing the dirty work for us

April 1th always has such fun uploads on RU-vid. I'll be watching this video as I wait for my appointment so thank you.

Ho-leee shit, I forgot about this game 😂 Love the video

this made me glad we live in the age of internet where we arent stuck on some pixel hunting puzzle and google our way too victory. you no longer fumble for awnsers in the dark, but atleast you wont go bump in the night against a brick wall anymore.

Love that you used Kingdom Come Deliverance music in this, can't wait for the sequel 😩

A proper Firesign Theatre game could have been a really fun thing...

Daemon tools... Now that's a name I haven't heard in a while.

I played this in the 2000s came across the disk in a yard sale . This was quite the experience.

Trust me and listen/view the Firesigns' 1985 Eat Or Be Eaten CD+G, which was so far ahead of its time that there was nothing to even play it on until the 3DO came out! (It's on RU-vid now)

I had this game years ago! I'm surprised anyone else remembers it.

I did not expect anyone to put this much effort into it, or would have much to say about it. I think the video rivals the actual game in length.

This is amazing. I've heard like, 2 people mention Pyst in the past 28 years. And one because of John Goodman and one because it made its way onto a game parody list. Convinced my dad to get this during our regular trip to an Egghead store (before NewEgg and internet was a thing). Looking forward to hearing about this "hidden gem." 😂

nice video, jewlar

Jwlar.... ill watch all of this because im sure this was suffering to make lol

I'm pretty sure a large portion of Myst's success had to do with how accessible it was to non-gamers and adults. With one button mouse controls, no action, and a first-person perspective, people who didn't play games had zero mental adjustments to make to understand what they were doing, or at least vastly less than any other game. That, along with being a very early showcase for CD-ROM drive technology, probably had more (or at least as much) to do with it's sales than its other qualities as a game.

I love me a day for foolish foolery :)

It definitely feels like the idea had potential but the jokes just don't land at all from what I've saw in this video

You set up the creators so well I was half expecting something not-terrible. Think I'd rather hock loogies in Beavis and Butthead's 90s game again.

You were just too sober for this game. As the name suggests you need to be absolutely pyst drunk to enjoy it.

what a rabbithole. Im trying to wrap my head around on what is a real story here.

I too don't blame you for not wanting to play more Starfield and not making the video.

Wish there were more "retrospective" videos about the stupid software/games from back in the day that you ended up owning a CD of despite not having any idea how. Wonderful upload, especially for an April Fools post :)

I like it honestly I mean, I understand how buying it years ago might leave you sad thinking you waster your money But like Today, since it's free I think it's really Allright It's a really nice piece of art and I'm so happy it exists I'm so happy it's still accessible ❤️ I think I'm just happy the history of those medias happened.

Love when the work is easy.

Talking about it takes longer then the entire game. Mood. Wish my copy still played in CD players, that single was awesome.

weird al actually got permissions for most/all of his songs, he's just a nice guy like that.

Wait a minute. King Mattress is Gul Darheel!

what? I don't remember this one can't be _that_ obscure..

The problem with pyst is that the gags arent connected, theres no follow ups, theres no building of running jokes throughout the world, every room is like a separate episode

never played it but I remember a few times hearing people remembering it and laughing about it. I remember the first time, when I was in HS, they were MYST fans and still liked PYST. Like you said it was only $15 at the most expensive, and I remember the CD with a cardboard sleeve shrink wrapped was only $2.99 or some absurdly low price. I bet the ones that liked it the most were pre-teen all the way though HS age, and they had to be that age when it came out and played MYST. So basically you had to be that age, have a computer at home, be a geek, had to play it within a few years of it coming out, and probably be from the United States.. That narrowed down the fan base to almost nothing but it still existed. I think all the game journos back then were just too old and, not sure of your age, but are you that age? EDIT: Looking at the year it came out I'm probably remembering it correctly. I was the target audience minus I hadn't played MYST and although I built my own computer I built it for Quake II and then HL came out and I didn't play anything on my PC for a few years besides HL mods, lol. This game seemed a lot older in my memory, but it only came out one year before HL. It was around that time in HS I remember people talking about it and it was soon after HS I remember it only costing $3 new. I bet it sold so much because it was so cheap, cheaper than the bargain version of MYST, same shrink wrapped cardboard sleeve edition. Maybe they kept on parading MYST up until the end.

36:32 Is that Widowmaker, there on the poster to the left?

Firesign! Ha! I had no idea one of those guys was responsible for this parody. In fact, I think this game coming out is where I learned the word, "parody" Also that narrator sounds like George Ledoux even though it's probably one of the Firesign guys.

And there i was, thinking the only copy in my home town being locked and buried somewhere within my vast collection of antique cardboard would prevent me from ever having to go through it again, only to be thwarted by the youtube algorithm!

Jamie Hewlett must have played this game at some point.

40 minutes of pyst... I don't think I even subjected myself to that much of it when I had a copy back in the day. Also @ 7:20 didn't know there was a sourcenext port of Diablo.

15:31 That's hard to do I think, we as a people tend to put our world into fiction because what else are we supposed to do? Writing about the past or future you'll still put your current time in it to a point and works of the past put their current time into them just as we do now. Everything becomes dated, it's just whether it's any good or not.

Yeah, I actually bought this back in the day, and I agree. Its biggest problem is that it feels like a Myst parody made by people who didn't understand Myst, and maybe didn't even bother playing it. Not to mention that you can see everything in something like an hour, and there's no replayability whatsoever.

Is that freaking John Goodman?!

My friend found this for $5 while we were killing a lazy summer afternoon at the mall. We returned it the next day for being a waste of time.

Myst was alright, but 7th Guest was the real reason to install a CD drive.

Not sure if Weird Al is the best example of free use protecting parodies. Because Al always asked permission from the artist he was parodying before publishing (or sometimes even finishing) the song. Prince for example never said "yes" to Als approaches so we never got Prince parody. Free use would had allowed Al to make parody of Princes songs but he is man of honor and never published/finalized his drafts. I think Eminem was another who didn't reply to Al (either at all or positively). Maybe there is one example where we can see free use protecting Als work when Coolio first gave Al blessing for parody but when he heard the song he hated it. But there was nothing Coolio could had done - not just because he agreed beforehand - but also because free use protects Als work. Still, i find it weird you used Al instead of any other example.

my god the section with the dislodged connector awakened something in me. nothing good, just pain

Wonder how long it would take to get ScumVM to work with it....

Wtf this game was like a fable when I was a kid in the 90s. I had assumed it was a freeware reskin but it had JOHN GOODMAN?

**IIIII'MMMMM PYYYYSSSTTT!!!**

28:34, that's literally just the Jim Backus drunk pilot joke from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World but 100x less funny

This new thumbnail rules

40 minutes April fools. Mad lad

1:29 ON NO IT'S PAROTTY

Leave it to a guy with the last name of Bergman to take something contemplative and beautiful, and fill it with mockery and scat jokes.

Shockwave and Flash are two separate runtimes, and should not be confused. Flash cannot run Shockwave content, and Shockwave cannot run Flash content. If you wanted to play games back in the day you'd need both runtimes installed. Flash was ported to Linux but Shockwave wasn't. I know that when Mattel still had the Hot Wheels flash site, they had a Shockwave game side-by-side with their Flash games. If you didn't have Shockwave you were SOL; it was a more complex game too. As far as I know, Shockwave was more or less abandoned as standalone runtime as Flash itself improved.

I kinda want to make a 3D version of Pyst with actual gameplay, called realPyst

I'd like to remind everyone that John Goodman had a very serious drinking problem around this time.

11:26 ... is that Cortana's voice actor?!

Player, tell me a lie that isn't a lie.

Actually, the reason Weird Al can get away with his works so easily is that he licenses the music he parodies.

Using Weird Al as an example of how well parody laws protect people is a bit of a weak choice, as it has been made known that he reaches out to every artist he parodies to get permission to release his music. That alone significantly reduces the likelihood of any legal action in the first place.

16:42 Dracula flow?