E.T. game dump unearthed

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

that was Swordquest. I really liked the seizure inducing light show every time you moved from room to room, but all the mini games were terrible and there's no way my toddler self was figuring any of that crap out. there were even real prizes for people that could finish the game and unlock the secret messages in the comic book or something.

how anyone played any of these "quest" Atari games for more than 2 minutes without access to an internet walkthrough still boggles my mind. I will never complain about today's games after growing up in that environment.

I had two of those games, EarthQuest and FireQuest. There were four, or supposed to be four really. WaterQuest and AirQuest (AirQuest never got released). They took place based on realms based on the zodiac.

The minigames weren't even the most annoying part. If I recall the point of the games was to get the different items in each of the rooms, and place them in the correct rooms. And of course most of the rooms had one of those mini games to beat before you could get the items. There would be clues from the accompanying comic book, to help you figure out what goes where. They were freaking annoying, as the clues they gave you didn't really tell you much. It became a game of trial and error.

The appeal was that it had a decent enough story, that you followed through the comic (made by Marvel I believe, maybe DC, but definitely one of the big two) which was rare or non-existent at that time and an end goal or finish which again was rare for that time.

But there was also a contest. Each of the games had a legendary artifact at the end of it, and if you finished all the games and sent in the code or whatever was on the final screen to Atari you could win the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery which was what the characters in the comic/game were searching for. And it was to be jeweled with real jewels. It was a big promo thing, I believe they said it was worth $100,000! Which is a nerds dream, let's be honest.

Of course, Atari never released the last game. I think they ended up splitting some of the prize money with some of the players who had written in already though. It's probably on Wikipedia. In fact, I think I'll go check that out.

[GGG]

Best lines of the Wikipedia entries -- Of 5000 entries received only 8 were correct. So of all the people playing, 5000 thought they had won, only 8 finished the game. That has to be on the list for hardest games ever.

Other great part was where the finalists of the second contest were paired down by writing what they liked about the game (by that point I assume it was nothing)

[Daradon]

'The winners of the four game contests would go on to a final competition where they would compete for a sword valued at $50,000. However, only two of the competitions actually took place before Atari cancelled the contest in 1983, as previously noted.'

'As noted above, the Chalice of Light was won by Michael Rideout. The chalice itself was made of gold and platinum and was adorned with citrines, diamonds, green jade, pearls, rubies, and sapphires. Like the Talisman of Penultimate Truth, the Chalice of Light had a value of $25,000. In a 2005 interview Rideout said he still was in possession of the chalice.'

So yes, some of the prizes were awarded, but not all. It was a pretty cool idea, especially for the time. The four 'Quest' games were under a series title of SwordQuest. It appears the first (and in a few ways whole series) was based on the zodiac, but the second on the tree of life and the third on the levels of chakras, so that's kinda interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordquest