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                    or Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684

Myst III: Exile, the latest adventure video game by computer game wizards Michel Kripalani and Greg Uhler, alumni of the University of California, San Diego, is due out May 8. At latest count, the game has sold more than 500,000 pre-release copies and ranks fifth on Amazon.com’s Top Selling Software list – before it’s even out of the gate.

Kripalani and Uhler are graduates of the Department of Visual Arts at UCSD, and prior to transferring into visual arts, the two were pursuing medical and engineering majors, respectively.

The gamesters founded Presto Studios in 1991 and released their first CD-ROM based adventure game in 1993. At the urging of the Learning Channel they designed the third installment in the Myst series, taking it to new technological heights. They also are currently working on the next generation of gaming, developing games for Microsoft’s Xbox platform.

Applying computer engineering skills to the arts, Kripalani and Uhler presaged UCSD’s establishment of what has become its fastest growing undergraduate major, ICAM, the Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major.