When “Myst” came out in the ’90s, it was the best-selling PC title of its time.

So introducing the game to a whole new generation of gamers on a popular handheld platform would be a no-brainer, right?

Not exactly.

When industry veteran Manny Granillo decided to acquire the license and make a DS port of the game, he had trouble finding a publisher. “You’d be surprised,” Granillo told Multiplayer at a demo of the game last month. “The problem is you get doors closed from publishers because they’re so focused on ‘What’s my next quarter? Where’s my sequel to whatever game?’ They’re not seeing the bigger picture.”

Granillo’s job is to look at the trends in gaming. As CEO and President of Hoplite Research, an “interactive think tank” that researches new ideas for game companies, he thought “Myst” was an overlooked opportunity. In addition to Granillo’s personal interest in the franchise, he felt that “Myst” on the DS would be perfect for casual gamers. “[”Myst”] is very, very popular with women and we’ve found that a lot people specifically bought the DS to play games like ‘Brain Age‘ who don’t normally play video games. … We feel it’s a direct connection with ‘Myst.’ We feel it’s totally an overlap of the same personality who would be into puzzles and adventure.”

Around 2002, Hoplite negotiated a licensing deal with creator Rand Miller and his company Cyan Worlds. But even with the creator on board, the major design challenge was to fit everything on the cartridge without sacrificing quality. “The real difficulty was just in the number of puzzles, because there was a lot of work to be done as far as programming,” Granillo said. “Like getting everything to be programmed exactly like the original, because a lot of the source code that’s in here was not created for the DS.”

He estimated that the game has at least 50 hours of gameplay, and it includes “The Rime Age,” which was left out of the original game.

Once they nailed down the design and DS-friendly controls, Granillo shopped it around to publishers. He wouldn’t disclose who or how many but told me that he pitched it to “most of the top publishers.”

“Most publishers understood the ‘Myst’ brand, but did not understand design,” Granillo explained. “It is one of the primary issues in the industry that is driven by marketing and sales people for acquisitions decisions.”

“It’d be fun for someone to do a little chart of all the executives who make the decisions,” he mused. “Like at Take-Two, EA, Midway and Eidos, whatever, and see which ones have a game developer background. They’re all salesmen. … Even though the brand is one of the most well-known games in the world, [publishers] were concerned about the technology being dated. What they failed to realize is that great games are not about technology; it’s about the design, the story, the premise and the overall experience.”

After two months of searching for a publisher, Hoplite partnered with Empire Interactive. “Myst DS” hits retail stores in the U.S. next week for $29.99. Expect a PSP version “sometime this summer.”

As for porting “Myst”’s sequel “Riven,” Granillo said, “It depends on how the consumers respond to ‘Myst.’ We believe they’re going to love the product so there are plans of potentially doing that.”