The game Myst, if you remember, begins with the protagonist stumbling across a book called ‘Myst’. After he touches that book, he is mysteriously taken away to a wondrous land, etc, etc. Now a fellow by the name of Mike Ando has made a fully functioning Myst book, with the actual game inside!
Yes, that is correct. Inside the book is a fully functioning computer, containing the best versions of every Myst game ever made.
According to Mike himself, the specs of the machine are as follows…
— The screen is a 640×480 5.0″ LED-backlit display. This provides 1:1 native pixel mapping on the original versions of Myst, Riven & Exile. There’s a matching 4-wire resistive glass touch-screen overlaid on top as the main input method, which updates at 160 samples/second with a touch resolution of 2048×2048.
–The power supply is a 3-cell Lithium-Ion battery capable of outputting 60A of current (but the book uses nowhere near that much). The power supply converts its voltage to the 12V & 5V required by the computer. Power consumption is around 12 watts & the battery life is around 1.5 to 2 hours.
— The CPU is an Intel Z530P running at 1.6GHz, and the GPU is an Intel GMA500 chipset capable of running DirectX 9.0C graphics. The system has 1GB of RAM (less RAM = less power consumption & heat).
— The system is entirely passively cooled and waste heat conducts out through the book. The CPU & GPU hover at 48’C. The only way to deal with heat in this book is to just avoid creating it in the first place, so all the components are ultra-low power.
The Operating System (Windows XP) & all software is loaded directly from a 32GB CompactFlash card that reads at 22MB/s.
— Included software is Myst Masterpiece Edition, realMyst, Riven DVD edition, Riven Elementary, Myst III: Exile DVD edition, Myst IV: Revelation, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst & The Path of the Shell, Myst V: End of Ages, The Manhole Masterpiece Edition and Crowthistle. Bonuses are a copy of the Book of Atrus e-book, plus shortcut copies of some extracted Myst Island flyby videos/linking panel images. Also, when you first turn on the book a video automatically plays featuring Atrus writing at his desk, then he looks up at you & mouths the words “who the devil are you?”.
For those whose eyes just glossed over reading all that, consider this – it’s capable of running Half-Life 2 at a 30fps+ & it contains the best editions of all the Myst games plus some extras.
Want to buy the device? It only costs $15,625!
Leave a Reply