CD-ROM Games

People lump a lot of early games/media exploration into the “Myst copycat” genre, but there are some really interesting experiments if you dig a bit. CDs let people experiment with video, 3D scenes, and mixed media over a unique 5 year period:

• Paradise Rescue
• Four-Sight
• MazeBrew
• Gadget
• Thoru Yamamoto made a massive amount of Hypercard stacks
  • Thoru Yamamoto Hypercards
  • Mysterous Drug Store
  • Mole Hole/Pumpkin House
• The Seven Colors: Legend of PSY・S City, the first game of Masaya Matsuura
• Chop Suey and other works of Theresa Duncan
• Komitsu’s archive (cd rom series
• Jungle Park
• Laurie Anderson’s Puppet Motel
• The works of Toshio Iwai

The Voyager media company had a hand in coming up with the “future of books”. Mostly cd-rom re-imaginings of existing books, but some truely novel stories as well:

• Best of list (part 1)