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Games Entertainment

The SwordQuest Saga 47

Posted by Zonk from the nice-prizes dept.
Via Kotaku, an interview at AtariHQ with Michael Rideout, the winner of the Fireworld Contest. Fireworld was a portion of the four-part SwordQuest Contest, meant to publicize Atari's sequel to the classic title Adventure. From the article: "Q: Can you describe the Chalice for us? What's its composition, etc? A: It's around seven to eight inches tall. The cup part of it is platinum and is maybe three or four inches across the top. The base is made of gold and has little diamonds on it. It also has three jade rings, two around the middle and one around the base. It has rubies and pearls going around the middle of it. There are five sapphires and some citrines in the middle section, as well as five lapis lazuli stones near the base."
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The SwordQuest Saga More

The SwordQuest Saga

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  • So, where's the torrent?

  • Blech (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @09:07PM (#12886207) Journal
    I thought this meant that Atari was making a sequel to Adventure now. Hey Slashdot editors, if you're not going to mention stuff like the fact that this contest happened in 1982 in the blurb, then why have a blurb?

    Rob
  • Hot damn, those prizes were amazing. I wish that nowadays there were contests with prizes on that order of total awesomeness. It wouldn't matter if said contests were very rare; the fact that they still happened would be good enough for me.

  • So how old is this article?

    Let's see, the winner is "now" 39 and he was 22 when he got his first Atari 2600 in 1981.

    If it's been 17 years since he got his first machine then this interview was given in 1998.

    Yep, you know it's a slow news day when slashdot is running links to 7 year old interviews about 20+ year old video game contests.

  • After RTFA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @09:38PM (#12886360) Journal
    There's a neat example of the Prisoner's Dilemma near the bottom:

    After a while, I got a letter from Atari stating that they wanted to cancel the contest. They offered Steven and myself $15,000 each to agree and they offered a smaller amount, maybe like $2,000 to each of the finalists for Waterworld. I think the reason Steven and I got more than everyone else was because as winners of the first two contests, we had a definite chance of winning the Sword. Everyone involved had to agree or else the contest would continue. I tried to call Steven and some of the other people from the contest to see what they were going to do but I couldn't get in touch with anyone. I talked it over with my father and decided to accept the offer, figuring that someone else would decline.

    BTW, it's amusing to see that he won the contest by brute-forcing it.

    Rob
  • You were supposed to decode clues in comics, and then play the game. I couldn't understand the game, but it had some fun minigames worth playing in them. I just remember thinking these games could be cool if they made sense.
  • So he asked me if he could borrow mine. "That cup is crunk. Yyyyeayuh!"

  • Arkenstone (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was an early IBM PC game called Arkenstone that I remember seeing in a Computerland around '82. It had a prize for finishing it, I believe it was $10000 or something like that. Haven't been able to find out _anything_ about it when I've looked in the last few years, not even confirmation it exists! Does anyone besides me remember this game?!
    • I thought it was an Apple II game but then again, that was 23 years of gaming ago. You should be able find information about it by searching the google USENET groups rather than a web search.

  • Hey... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Elranzer ( 851411 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:18PM (#12886787) Homepage
    From the article:

    JH: Mike, can you start with some background info on yourself so our readers can get to know a little more about you?

    MR: Sure. I'm 39 years old. I'm not married. I'm a computer programmer for a company that writes software for real-estate companies. I enjoy reading fantasy and science-fiction, and watching videos, TV shows, and movies like Star Trek and Babylon 5.

    No doubt, he's browsing Slashdot as we speak.
  • i played all the games, and remember being really pissed (as pissed as a 6 or 7 year old gets) that the last one never came out... :(
    • What I was really pissed about was I was only able to get the first one before the crash. And when I found the last two in a dollar bin later, both had had their comics stolen.

      It wasn't till a few years ago that I found pdf's of the comics online somewhere.
  • Have you seen any of the newer systems (Playstation, Jaguar, Nintendo 64)?

    I think someone needs to date this article - is it too much to add content date meta tags?

    Bah.
    • "Have you seen any of the newer systems (Playstation, Jaguar, Nintendo 64)?
      I think someone needs to date this article - is it too much to add content date meta tags?"

      I thought you were joking! Then I RTFA, and lo! and behold! It really was there.

      I played the first game in the series when it came out and it was bizarre. I remember thinking the comic was good, but the game was not.

      I recently bought the Atari classics CD for the PC and it had these games on it. I tried playing them and was amazed tha

      • Yes, people who pine for the glorious days of simple gameplay and "when games were just fun" don't remember the simple days when graphics were an impediment to the gameplay.

        I do have fun playing some of the old games with the Atari Collection for the XBox (especially the arcade version of Lunar Lander); but wow, those rose colored glasses really alter those old games until you play them again.

        I still want to play Miner 2049er again though. And:
        • Caverns of Mars
        • Autoduel (or an updated GTA style autoduel!
        • I've replayed some of those games in emulators and unfortunately most of them are best left to our rose-colored memories...

          I can remember playing Karateka on the Apple IIs in high school. It was really exciting. The cut scenes were a new idea and the animation wickedly smooth (for the day). I loved punching the bird that attacked you.

          There was another game we played that I can't remember the name of... Similar to the original Wolfenstein (2D...). Top down maze, little stick people. Kind of an Indiana J

  • Weird (Score:2)

    by GypC ( 7592 )
    I was just thinking about those games the other day, for the first time in at least 15 years...
  • The idea behind the SwordQuest games was unique, but the execution was terrible. Having to use a comic book to help solve puzzles was a brilliant as many gamers are also avid comic book fans (this was a bit truer in the 80's than it is now), and the comics themselves were fairly well written (typical 80's fantasy cheese, but entertaining nonetheless). Unfortunately where the SwordQuest series failed was in the games themselves. Each SwordQuest 'game' was really a series of mini games that all shared a co
  • If the guy was 39 when the article was written...and he was 22 in 1981...let's see...17 years after 1981 was...1998...making this article SEVEN YEARS OLD. I believe this represents a new editorial low.

    Coleman
  • Ahh yes, I remember these games! What a frustration it was to figure out the clues, or lack there of. I never had the comics as a kid and had no clue where to put the items, although I stumbled upon a few and had to resort to memorization (kind of like Fathom, remember that one?). Messing up the game was always easier. ;)

    Still, the prizes were fantastic! And the games did feel timeless, as if you were in another realm altogether. And the prizes? They're something else! Don't see anything like that these da
  • is the game any good?
    • Eh. The motiff is good. But the game itself is rather lacking. Unless you enjoy puzzle games that have little to no clues. I just liked collecting all the items.

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