Post by goldensandslash on Jul 15, 2022 4:34:41 GMT
SwordQuest is back.
This is a sentence that I've been wanting to type ever since I first learned about SwordQuest.
So... what the hell am I talking about? What's SwordQuest and why am I so happy about it coming back?
SwordQuest is a series of video games for the Atari 2600, released in 1982-1983. There were four titles in total: Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld. Yeah, they named them after the elements.
So what is it about games from the 1980s that is so cool? Well, in the games, you go through rooms looking for treasure. That's it. But there's more to it than that. These aren't fake in-game treasures. They're real-world treasures. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First, you need to buy the games. Each game came with a poster and a comic made by DC Comics. Additionally, if you were a SwordQuest club member, you'd also get a T-shirt.
As you progress through the game, you'll find various clues. Decipher the clues, figure out what they mean, and send them to Atari. Then, if you did it right, you'd get invited to a contest where you could play a special version of the game, alongside other players who had also done the same. The winner would receive a priceless treasure.
The winner of Earthworld got a talisman made of 18-karat solid gold studded with twelve diamonds and the birthstones of the twelve zodiac signs.
The winner of Fireworld got a chalice made of platinum and gold, studded with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and green jade.
The winner of Waterworld got a crown made of gold, decorated with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and aquamarines.
The winner of Airworld got a philosopher's stone, a large piece of white jade encased in a gold box adornned with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds.
The four winners then came back for another competition against each other, and the winner of that got a jewel-encrusted sword, with an 18-karat gold handle and a silver blade, covered in diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.
Yeah. When I said "treasure", I meant it. This isn't some joke toy that you get in a happy meal. This is basically a real-life medieval treasure quest.
If you tried to play the games today, you'd be wandering around confused. So, let me give you the rundown.
In Earthworld, you are placed in a circular chamber of twelve rooms. It's circular, so you will loop back to the beginning after you reach the end. It essentially goes on forever. Each of the twelve rooms corresponds to a zodiac star sign. You can access the treasure room of that star sign by playing a quick minigame. When you do, you can either pick up or leave behind any items you want. When the right combination of items are left in each room, you trigger a clue, which is a set of numbers, like "16 4". You go to the comic book, and look at page 16, panel 4. Hidden somewhere in this panel is a word. If you look closely at the background, you can just make out the word "spire". Eventually, you find all ten words. But you're not done yet. Five of those words are fake. If you look at the first page of the comic book, you'll see that the words "prime" and "number" are in slightly differently-colored text compared to the rest of the words on this page. That tells you that the true clues are the prime numbered clues. Then you just put them in the right order to form a sentence.
Obviously, if a game company were to do something like this nowadays, the internet would just ruin everything. You could just Google what the result is. As soon as one person figures it out, the whole world knows. But back then, only eight people managed to get it correct, out of 5000 attempts. The winner of the Earthworld contest was Steven Bell.
The second game was Fireworld. This is largely the same game, except that instead of being a zodiac, the rooms are laid out based on the Tree of Life instead. Also the minigames are different. This game is easier than Earthworld. Over 50 people managed to get the right clues this time. To narrow it down, Atari asked people to write in telling them what they enjoyed about the game. And somehow, based on those answers, they narrowed it down to fifty competitors. The winner this time was Michael Rideout.
Next came Waterworld, not to be confused with that horrible movie of the same name. This was when things started to become... problematic.
The Video Game Crash of 1983 was taking effect. If you don't know, at this point in time, Atari was dominating the video game market to a stupid degree. But they had the EXCLUSIVE right to release games for their console - there were no third-party developers. And they were refusing to give out royalties or authorial credit to their programmers, so many talented individuals quit the company, going back to making arcade games, or starting their own companies. This resulted in a flood of so many consoles that the consumer could not keep track of them. In order to stay relevant, they had to churn out a ton of new games, thereby prioritizing quantity over quality. There was no form of quality control in place for video games yet, so you ended up with a TON of absolute crap. And the consumer has no way to tell when a game is good or not - the internet doesn't exist and neither do gaming magazines. Finally, the personal computer was first being placed into households for the first time. Why buy a video game console when you can buy a PC instead? On top of that, the media was portraying video gaming as "just a fad", leaving many to abandon it. All of this combined to Atari's stock levels plummeting, and the near-total collapse of video gaming as we know it. In fact, if Nintendo hadn't come out with the NES in 1985, I think there's a very real chance that video games WOULD have just been a niche fad from the late 70s-early 80s, and forgotten about today.
As a result of this, Waterworld was a very rare game. Only a limited number of copies exist. There are only 7 rooms, which is less than we saw in Earthworld and Fireworld. They are based on the seven chakras.
As for the contest... it never happened. Atari sold the company before such a thing could happen.
And Airworld was never released.
The big question, though, is: what happened to the remaining treasures? We know they existed since they were on display at the competitions, but where are they now? This has been a big source of speculation and urban legends for gamers. No one really knows the truth.
Anyways, why am I telling you about something that happened forty years ago? Because... SwordQuest is back!
Atari is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and to commemorate it, they are releasing a collection of 90 different games, for all modern consoles. In addition to classic games that we've been playing since the 1980s, this collection includes six previously-unreleased titles. And one of those titles? Airworld.
The contest is obviously long since over, so there's not really much point in playing it (unless you also get to see the comic, in which case, I guess there's a point in finishing the storyline started in the first three comics). But still. The fact that Atari is FINALLY restoring balance to the cosmos, by adding Air after Earth, Fire, and Water... that makes me immensely happy.
I've been a huge fan of SwordQuest ever since I learned about it. But there was never anything to really do with this information, other than spread the sadness at its cancellation. A real quest for real treasure sounds amazing. It would have been the greatest thing in all of video game's history. But it has a sad ending, because it never actually reached a proper conclusion. Until now.
SwordQuest is back.
This is a sentence that I've been wanting to type ever since I first learned about SwordQuest.
So... what the hell am I talking about? What's SwordQuest and why am I so happy about it coming back?
SwordQuest is a series of video games for the Atari 2600, released in 1982-1983. There were four titles in total: Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld. Yeah, they named them after the elements.
So what is it about games from the 1980s that is so cool? Well, in the games, you go through rooms looking for treasure. That's it. But there's more to it than that. These aren't fake in-game treasures. They're real-world treasures. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First, you need to buy the games. Each game came with a poster and a comic made by DC Comics. Additionally, if you were a SwordQuest club member, you'd also get a T-shirt.
As you progress through the game, you'll find various clues. Decipher the clues, figure out what they mean, and send them to Atari. Then, if you did it right, you'd get invited to a contest where you could play a special version of the game, alongside other players who had also done the same. The winner would receive a priceless treasure.
The winner of Earthworld got a talisman made of 18-karat solid gold studded with twelve diamonds and the birthstones of the twelve zodiac signs.
The winner of Fireworld got a chalice made of platinum and gold, studded with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls, and green jade.
The winner of Waterworld got a crown made of gold, decorated with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and aquamarines.
The winner of Airworld got a philosopher's stone, a large piece of white jade encased in a gold box adornned with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds.
The four winners then came back for another competition against each other, and the winner of that got a jewel-encrusted sword, with an 18-karat gold handle and a silver blade, covered in diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.
Yeah. When I said "treasure", I meant it. This isn't some joke toy that you get in a happy meal. This is basically a real-life medieval treasure quest.
If you tried to play the games today, you'd be wandering around confused. So, let me give you the rundown.
In Earthworld, you are placed in a circular chamber of twelve rooms. It's circular, so you will loop back to the beginning after you reach the end. It essentially goes on forever. Each of the twelve rooms corresponds to a zodiac star sign. You can access the treasure room of that star sign by playing a quick minigame. When you do, you can either pick up or leave behind any items you want. When the right combination of items are left in each room, you trigger a clue, which is a set of numbers, like "16 4". You go to the comic book, and look at page 16, panel 4. Hidden somewhere in this panel is a word. If you look closely at the background, you can just make out the word "spire". Eventually, you find all ten words. But you're not done yet. Five of those words are fake. If you look at the first page of the comic book, you'll see that the words "prime" and "number" are in slightly differently-colored text compared to the rest of the words on this page. That tells you that the true clues are the prime numbered clues. Then you just put them in the right order to form a sentence.
Obviously, if a game company were to do something like this nowadays, the internet would just ruin everything. You could just Google what the result is. As soon as one person figures it out, the whole world knows. But back then, only eight people managed to get it correct, out of 5000 attempts. The winner of the Earthworld contest was Steven Bell.
The second game was Fireworld. This is largely the same game, except that instead of being a zodiac, the rooms are laid out based on the Tree of Life instead. Also the minigames are different. This game is easier than Earthworld. Over 50 people managed to get the right clues this time. To narrow it down, Atari asked people to write in telling them what they enjoyed about the game. And somehow, based on those answers, they narrowed it down to fifty competitors. The winner this time was Michael Rideout.
Next came Waterworld, not to be confused with that horrible movie of the same name. This was when things started to become... problematic.
The Video Game Crash of 1983 was taking effect. If you don't know, at this point in time, Atari was dominating the video game market to a stupid degree. But they had the EXCLUSIVE right to release games for their console - there were no third-party developers. And they were refusing to give out royalties or authorial credit to their programmers, so many talented individuals quit the company, going back to making arcade games, or starting their own companies. This resulted in a flood of so many consoles that the consumer could not keep track of them. In order to stay relevant, they had to churn out a ton of new games, thereby prioritizing quantity over quality. There was no form of quality control in place for video games yet, so you ended up with a TON of absolute crap. And the consumer has no way to tell when a game is good or not - the internet doesn't exist and neither do gaming magazines. Finally, the personal computer was first being placed into households for the first time. Why buy a video game console when you can buy a PC instead? On top of that, the media was portraying video gaming as "just a fad", leaving many to abandon it. All of this combined to Atari's stock levels plummeting, and the near-total collapse of video gaming as we know it. In fact, if Nintendo hadn't come out with the NES in 1985, I think there's a very real chance that video games WOULD have just been a niche fad from the late 70s-early 80s, and forgotten about today.
As a result of this, Waterworld was a very rare game. Only a limited number of copies exist. There are only 7 rooms, which is less than we saw in Earthworld and Fireworld. They are based on the seven chakras.
As for the contest... it never happened. Atari sold the company before such a thing could happen.
And Airworld was never released.
The big question, though, is: what happened to the remaining treasures? We know they existed since they were on display at the competitions, but where are they now? This has been a big source of speculation and urban legends for gamers. No one really knows the truth.
Anyways, why am I telling you about something that happened forty years ago? Because... SwordQuest is back!
Atari is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and to commemorate it, they are releasing a collection of 90 different games, for all modern consoles. In addition to classic games that we've been playing since the 1980s, this collection includes six previously-unreleased titles. And one of those titles? Airworld.
The contest is obviously long since over, so there's not really much point in playing it (unless you also get to see the comic, in which case, I guess there's a point in finishing the storyline started in the first three comics). But still. The fact that Atari is FINALLY restoring balance to the cosmos, by adding Air after Earth, Fire, and Water... that makes me immensely happy.
I've been a huge fan of SwordQuest ever since I learned about it. But there was never anything to really do with this information, other than spread the sadness at its cancellation. A real quest for real treasure sounds amazing. It would have been the greatest thing in all of video game's history. But it has a sad ending, because it never actually reached a proper conclusion. Until now.
SwordQuest is back.