For the book:

After doing some googling (http://www.riumplus.com/mystbook/) I discovered that the original Myst book used in the game footage was a "Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume LIV, Issue 312, December 1876 to May 1877".

I looked on ebay and didn't like the look of the "Harper's Monthly" that were up for auction/sell. After looking around a bit more I found "Scribner's Monthly Magazine,Volume XL, Nov 1875 to Apr 1876" which looked close enough to the Myst book for my needs and it didn't hurt that it was cheaper than Harper's Monthly.

LCD:

At first I was thinking of using a Raspberry Pi with a LCD screen and replacing the boot sequence with the video of the Myst flyby. But then I discovered "video greeting cards" that you can put custom videos in them.

The "video greeting cards" we're perfect for my needs! boot straight up into the video and it has a magnetic trigger to turn it on and off. So when you open the book the video starts playing about a second later and when you close the book it shuts off.

The build:

Once I had the book and the video greeting card the rest of the build was simple.

  1. I looked at tutorials online on how to make book safes and they all use white glue or puzzle glue witch wouldn't work well on such old paper, it causes the paper to get crumpled up and just look horrible! So I decided to use spray adhesive to glue all the pages together and it went very well. I glued the pages in groups of 10 to 15 so cutting was super clean and simple and then just glued it all together.
  2. After cutting out room for the electronics from the video greeting card. I simply glued down the electronics with epoxy.
  3. The title... I found online the Myst/Riven fonts and used them to 3D print a stencil. I mixed together some oil paints until I got the same color to match the books binding. And stenciled the title on to the cover. When the paint still wasn't fully dry but dry to the touch, I placed a paper towel over the title and applied pressure until the title got that weathered look.
  4. Uploaded the videos and done. Because the video greeting card I used can support up to 5 videos. I included after the Myst flyby a personal happy birthday video for my friend in the style of the red/blue prison books. Because I still have room for more videos I added in the very end all of the Myst ages flybys.

That's it...