The Angry Video Game Nerd has made a lot of videos over the past several years where he's trashed games left and right for being shitty. This time, he goes a different route and explains the story behind the early 1980's Atari Swordquest videogames and associated contest. This was a videogame contest unlike no other. The Swordquest games themselves were the contest. Each Swordquest game was a puzzle of clues that players had to solve, and the prizes were golden fantasy items, such as a talisman, chalice, crown, stone, and even a gold-plated, jewel-encrusted sword for a grand prize! Unfortunately, due to Atari having serious financial troubles by the time the latter half of this contest rolled around (along with the rest of the videogame industry - it was the fabled videogame crash of 1983-84), not only did the contest never finish, but the fourth and final game was never even finished. Nonetheless, this contest was a historical moment of the golden age of videogames.


Here's the Angry Video Game Nerd video about the Swordquest games: (Really well done, IMO)
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/61988


Here's the Atari Swordquest wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordquest



I remember these games when I was really young. I had the first two - EarthWorld and FireWorld. I could beat most of the minigames and get clues, but I was too young to know what to do from there. I was well aware of the contest going on (I had the boxes/manuals/comics/posters/etc.), but I was much too young to enter it anyways.



Check out some of these responses from the NeoGAF forums: (NeoGAF Angry Video Game Nerd thread)

Sanjuru Tsubaki wrote:

Goddam 80s.

kamspy wrote:

We play some pussy ass games nowadays. Damn.

BigJonnson wrote:

I want to play games for treasure!

gketter wrote:

man that was some serious treasure makes achievements seem a bit empty

TheKyle07 wrote:

Epic contest and an epic video. They really should bring this thing back.

jaekwon15 wrote:

The Nerd is right. i played Earthworld when i was 7 years old, without instruction or the comic. i had no idea what was happening. i just remember being mesmerized by the flashing lights when the clues were given.

Warren Ellis wrote:

lol.. real swords and crowns as prizes ? the 80s were as ridiculous as they were cool