One of the best-selling games in history almost had a theme park dedicated to it.
Once upon a time, Myst was a very popular game. How popular was it? Well, it was the best selling PC game ever made until a little title called The Sims came along in 2002 and dethroned it from that lofty position.
In fact, Myst was so popular in the mid-nineties that Disney even considered building a Myst-themed amusement park.
In an interview with AV Club, Rand Miller, a member of Myst's design team, recalls negotiating with Disney concerning their interest in building a Myst theme park.
"That was absolutely true," says Miller on the subject of whether or not Disney ever approached them regarding the project. "Basically, there was a place down in Florida—it’s one of the island areas that they had that wasn’t used very much. But it had some walkways among trees, and an island area, and we went down and looked at it and walked around it, and it was incredibly Myst-like. It was perfect for Myst."
It may have been the perfect set-up but, according to Miller, the pitch suffered when the two sides weren't able to reach an agreement regarding the big picture business aspects of the project. Miller indicates that Disney just started to lose interest in the idea and, like so many Disney World animatronics, the whole thing just slowly started to fall apart.
Perhaps the really crazy part about this whole story is that it's actually not that hard to imagine such a thing being pretty cool even to this day. Wandering around an adventure game island solving puzzles would actually make for a pretty great theme park, though, if we may be so bold to suggest how Disney should conduct their business, perhaps it would be best if they focused instead on creating a theme park designed entirely around the LucasArts adventure games now that they happen to own a controlling interest in that company.
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