Are you sure? One could argue Myst is not much more than a fairy tale with a set of beautifully rendered illustrations. The illustrations weren't _that_ brilliant on their own, and the fairy tale part wasn't in a league of its own at all.
The combination was quite new, though and execution certainly was very good.
However, I think that rabbit did get pulled out of the same hat earlier a couple of times. At the very least, the first movie and "the wizard of Oz" did the same.
I also think it isn't hard to think of future products that might give the same, if not a much better, 'wow' effect. For example, imagine wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling 300 DPI displays showing a physically realistic world, showing Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969. Now, imagine that in interactive form.
On the other hand, the internet has made it harder to be wowed by new technologies because chances are you will read about a product far before seeing it for the first time. Because of that, I think it takes a much larger jump in quality to be wowed.
> The illustrations weren't _that_ brilliant on their own
The impressive part is that they weren't illustrations, they were individual renders of from 3D models of the worlds, designed, built and rendered on computers with a small fraction the processing power of my cell phone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzx_9LkVI
I think "Walk" is stretching it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst: "The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown on the screen; the scene then crossfades into another frame."
So, just like Google Streetview, with way fewer, way higher quality images.
Back to the 'rabbit out of the hat' subject: I found the 3D view in iOS maps on an iPad way more a 'rabbit' thing than I found Myst a rabbit at the time (the first city I saw it was Rome. I looked at a few others, but still think that is the best)
The combination was quite new, though and execution certainly was very good.
However, I think that rabbit did get pulled out of the same hat earlier a couple of times. At the very least, the first movie and "the wizard of Oz" did the same.
I also think it isn't hard to think of future products that might give the same, if not a much better, 'wow' effect. For example, imagine wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling 300 DPI displays showing a physically realistic world, showing Tranquility Base on July 20, 1969. Now, imagine that in interactive form.
On the other hand, the internet has made it harder to be wowed by new technologies because chances are you will read about a product far before seeing it for the first time. Because of that, I think it takes a much larger jump in quality to be wowed.