Now THAT Was a Contest!

A little bit of Video Game Lore I recently uncovered.

Back in the early 1980's, in the wonderful time before the dreaded Video Game Crash of 1983, Atari had a set of four games (Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld) collectively called SwordQuest. Centered around these four games was perhaps the single most awesome contest in Video Game history. (The crash and cancellation of the SwordQuest contest happened before the release of Airworld, so not only was the contest cancelled, all four games weren't even released).

The premise was pretty simple, all things considered. The game came with a comic book that told the story to the game (as Atari games were not known for their in-depth storylines). You went around in the game and solved puzzles. When you found the puzzles, you got a clue telling you where to look in the comic book for a word hidden somewhere in the artwork. If you found all the clues for a particular game, you could combine these words into a sentence, and send that into Atari.

Contestants would be selected from the people who sent in the finished sentence from the game, and they would be invited to play against each other. Whoever got the most clues in 90 minutes won the contest for that game. There were to be five contests altogether, one for each game and a final "Swordquest". The four winners from each individual contest would play against each other in the final.

The most awesome thing about the five Quests were the prizes. No namby pamby money or consumer goods here! No sir! The five prizes were practically British Crown Jewels, man! Gold and gem encrusted artifacts, straight from the game!

Here's a rundown:

The prize for the Earthworld quest was a talisman, representing the "Talisman of Penultimate Truth" from the game. An eighteen karot solid gold amulet, it was encrusted with twelve diamonds and the twelve birthstones of the Zodiac. A white gold sword decoration completed the look.


The prize for the Fireworld was a chalice, representing the game's "Chalice of Light." It is made of gold and platinum, and encrusted with citrines, diamonds, green jade, pearls, rubies, and sapphires.


The Waterworld prize was to be a crown, the "Crown of Life," and it was a gold crown set with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires.


The Airworld prize was to be a "Philosopher's Stone." It was a fist-sized piece of white jade, with a gold cover encrusted with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires. (Shown below with the cover on)


The final prize on the SwordQuest was to be, obviously, a sword. I couldn't find a photograph of the sword, and as far as I can tell, it was never made. It was, however, going to be even more ostentatious than the other prizes. It was to be a sword with a silver blade and a gold hilt, set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

Each of the World prizes was valued at $25,000 and the sword was valued at $50,000. Adjusting for inflation from 1983 to now, they would be worth slightly less than twice that today ($47,550 for the four smaller prizes and $95,510 for the sword.)

Alas! Alack! Atari was bought out, and to top it off, the Video Game Crash happened. The video game industry was brought to it's knees, paving the way for the Rise of the Nintendo. The SwordQuest was doomed.

Note my usage of various tenses. I said "Was" for the talisman, "Is" for the chalice, and "Was to be" for the other three... The Chalice is the only item known to still be in existence, nice and safe in the bank of Michael Rideout, the Firequest winner. The talisman was, unfortunately, broken apart and sold so the winner could pay for college. (Gotta do what you gotta do...) The sword was likely never made. And the Philosopher's Stone and Crown were lost. Likely, they grace an executive's office somewhere...

They just don't hold contests like this anymore. It's always for cash or a bike or something. They need to do this again...

(Bethesda Software! You have Elder Scrolls IV coming up! How about it?)