September 12, 2024 • 39 mins
In the early 1980s, Atari is one of the biggest entertainment brands in the world and seeks to promote the biggest video game contest to date, promising $150,000 in prizes. But what starts out as a promising adventure quickly devolves into chaos.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
In nineteen eighty two, thirteen year old Bert war Doll
is looking through an Atari catalog. At the time, Atari
was the cutting edge in video games, promising an arcade
experience in your shag carpeted living room.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Atari video computer system is twenty contridges with thirteen
hundred game variations.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
You play on your own TV sect.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Bert sees something intriguing. It's an ad for Earthworld, the
first title in Atari's sword Quest series of games. Epic
and ambitious. Sword Quest promises one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in prizes split up among five finalists, with the
Sword of Ultimate Sorcery going to the grand prize winner.
(00:40):
Usually the prize for winning a game was getting yelled
at by your parents for staying at the arcade for
too long.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I remember there was a photo like a game image.
The sword Quest Earthroll game is about the zodiac signs.
In this particular picture of the screen grab was the
Leo sign. It is like a colorful waterfall that you
have to kind of run through. That was my first
image of seeing sword Quests from that and as I recall,
they did say, you know there was a contest, you know,
(01:07):
win one hundred and fifty dollars dollars, you know, something
like that, And they didn't give a ton of details
about it. But it was exciting, of.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Course it was exciting. It was the most exciting thing
a thirteen year old could possibly hear. Real prizes for
playing a video game. Weren't games supposed to be brain
rotting wastes of time. The problem was that video games
didn't have drop dates yet. He knew it was supposed
to come out in October, but he didn't know the day.
So Burt has to try to find the game the
(01:37):
old fashioned way by calling every store within driving distance.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Hello, kmart, Hey, do you have an Earth World?
Speaker 6 (01:49):
Do we have what Earth World?
Speaker 5 (01:51):
From?
Speaker 7 (01:52):
Atari?
Speaker 5 (01:53):
Earthworm?
Speaker 6 (01:54):
Earth World?
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Let me put you through to long care.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Bert calls every store he can think of, and then finally.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
JC Penny was the biggest store in our area that
carried Atari games, at least the closest to my house.
And I do remember calling them and asking them and
they said they were going to be carrying it, so
I knew when to go and it would be there.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
This was Bert's big Christmas story moment, except it's October
and he has to pay for it. With his own allowance,
but still he convinces his parents to drive him to J. C. Penny.
He leaps out of the car and runs toward the entrance. Inside,
past the clothing and the jewelry and the small appliances,
(02:37):
is the stores, video game department, a tiny glass encased
oasis of excitement, and a store full of socks.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
There was a big kiosk that had electronics. There was
electronic stuff surrounding the kiosk too, but it was in
the kiosk where the games where they were behind the counter,
but it was a glass count so you could see
the games lined up in there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Bert scans the shelves, past Asteroids, past Night Driver, past
Breakout until he sees it Earthworld. The cover has a
muscular man and woman wielding swords, a hovering head with
an eye patch, and a minotaur. It was very van
mural Rock and Roll, an image to the conjured up
(03:18):
Everything and adventure game should be. Bert fishes the money
out of his pocket, grabs the game, and dashes back
out to the car. On the drive home, he tears
into the plastic wrap, scanning the manual.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It seemed to take forever to drive home because I
was so excited to play a new game. But I
had that time to look at everything I could look
at the catalog, I could read the instructions. That's what
I did. I spent that time looking at everything I could.
And this game was also different because it came with
a comic book, which was unusual.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, a comic book, which would become important later. At home,
he pushes the cartridge into his Atari twenty six hundred,
a shimmering sword appears on screen.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Well, I was definitely super excited by this time. The
Atari had been moved to my bedroom. Unfortunately, I had
a black and white TV at the time, not color,
so I couldn't see it. But when you plug the
game in for the first time, there's this magical, colorful
sword that comes on the screen, which and color looks
pretty impressive, even for Atari twenty six hundred. And then
you press the button to get started, and there you are.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Bert became immersed in a world of sorcery and magic,
wizards and demons, and if he could navigate it successfully.
There was a prize at the end for this first game.
It was a talisman, a solid gold pendant valued at
twenty five thousand dollars or the equivalent of about eighty
thousand dollars today. That was more than a lot of
(04:45):
people made in an entire year. For the first time,
a home video game could pay off with a real,
tangible reward, a prize that held enough value to pay
for college or a new car. But what started as
a video game promotion would quickly become one of the
most controversial moments in eighties pop culture, with a lot
(05:05):
of broken promises, urban myths, payoffs, and a central mystery
that's consumed fans for decades, a mystery that involves real,
not imagined lost treasure. Atari promised tens of thousands of
players the chance to have a massive sword to be
crowned the king of video games. That wasn't exactly what happened. Bert,
(05:29):
of course, didn't know any of this, not yet. Right now,
there's no conspiracy theories, no accusations, no crestfallen kids. He
wraps his hand around the joystick, keeps his thumb hovering
over the red button, and hits start. The sword Quest
competition is about to begin, and video games will never
(05:50):
be the same. For iHeartRadio, this is the legend of
sword Quest. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus and this is
episode one, The Sword and the Stoned. In nineteen eighty two,
Et was the film everyone wanted to see. Spider Man
(06:12):
was one of the most popular comic book characters. Journey
was a big concert act. All three of these things
had something in common. They were also available as games.
You could play on the Atari video computer system. Yes,
you could play as a member of Journey, although the
very limited sound chips of the time didn't really do
their music justice. Atari wasn't just the biggest thing in gaming,
(06:40):
It really was the only thing in gaming. Sure they
were rival home game consoles, but none could approach Atari's
market dominance or its cultural cachet. Atari was like Kleenex.
People didn't play video games. They played Atari. Walk into
a McDonald and you could grab a special at Tari
scratch off ticket to win free games. When politicians advocated
(07:04):
for high tech business development to create jobs, the press
dubbed them Atari democrats. When Harrison Ford runs through the
rainy Neon Alleys in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, audiences catch
a glimpse of a massive Atari logo, that three line
graphic that promised a trip into a world of unlimited imagination.
(07:25):
That film took place in twenty nineteen, meaning Atari was
set to rule the gaming realm for a long time
to come. The logo being in Scott's movie was no accident.
Blade Runner was released by Giant Movie Studio Warner Brothers,
and Warner Brothers was owned by Warner Communications, a massive
media conglomerate that also owned, among other things, Atari. But
(07:49):
Atari wasn't some up and coming division. In the first
nine months of nineteen eighty two, it was responsible for
nearly fifty percent of Warner's overall revenue, was making more
money than their films were, with cash registers ringing up
over a billion dollars in systems and games. That was
the first Golden Age of video games. Though it wasn't
(08:10):
the first home console, Atari was for many people the
only way to play, and.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
That was exciting. When I was at Atari, we were
literally creating and defining the medium of interactive television entertainment
that had never happened before. Until that point, television was
a passive entertainment form one hundred percent, and we turned
it into an active entertainment form, and that was revolutionary
(08:38):
in ways they're still rippling through society.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
That's Howard Scott Warshaw. Howard was a game engineer for
Atari who was responsible for some of their biggest hits,
like a tie in game for Raiders of the Lost
Dark and Yars Revenge. The Yar of the title was
just the first name of the Atari CEO, Ray Kassar,
spelled backwards. That's Howard's humor. When he programmed Raiders, he
(09:01):
got his hand on a bullwhip to crack around the offices.
It also meant meaning Steven Spielberg to get the director's approval.
When Spielberg was nowhere to be seen, Howard gave himself
a tour of the studio.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I walked everywhere. I walked in and out as sets.
I saw my favorite shows. I stole things off of sets.
I hope the statute has run on that, but I
actually stole little pieces on a memorabilia from some of
the sets. It was just an amazing day to be
It was like a dream tour of the studio and
(09:33):
at the end I get to talk to Steven.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Spielberg to put Atari's status in perspective. Remember that video
rental stores weren't on every corner just yet. Many homes
didn't have cable television. Electronic home entertainment was limited to
what was on TV and whatever was playing on your
stereo or walkman. Having an Atari system was major.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Atari wasn't the first video game system. The Atari VCS
was not the first home video game system, but it
was the first home video game system to hit the stratosphere.
It was ubiquitous, It was everywhere.
Speaker 8 (10:08):
It was.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was millions and millions and millions and millions of
units out in homes, which no one had ever done
before with a video game system. Because Atari was a
wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Communications, which is a huge conglomerate,
Warner was able to roll their Atari money into their
overall corporate picture. People knew Warner was doing really well.
(10:30):
Nobody knew just what an amazing cash fountain Atari had
turned into.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The Atari Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari twenty
six hundred, was released in nineteen seventy seven. The system
originally retailed for about two hundred dollars or almost one
thousand dollars today. While it sold well initially, it didn't
really take off until the nineteen eighty release of Space Invaders,
which had players shooting an endless Armada of Aliens. You
(11:00):
can't really say enough about the arcade version of Space
Invaders as a phenomenon. It grows to nearly four billion
dollars by nineteen eighty three, which makes it one of
the most successful entertainment properties in history, not just games,
any entertainment property. When Atari released a home version, it
established them as the company to beat. No longer did
(11:23):
Space Invaders fans have to brave Zenie arcades or pay
a cover charge at the bar to get their hands
on the game. Thanks in part to Space Invaders, by
nineteen eighty two, fifteen million Atari VCS systems had been sold.
Players would flip a toggle style switch on their system,
which resembled a station wagon thanks to the faux wood
grain design. There was a switch to select whether you
(11:45):
had a black and white or color television, and another
switch to select the difficulty setting. It was like being
in a cockpit.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Why didn't I have them?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Then you'd select a cartridge from your collection and jam
it into the center of the concert. Space Invaders, Raiders,
Centipede asteroids, all of them with amazing painted art from
Atari's in house illustrators, some of whom went on to
careers in fine art. The art promised danger, excitement, the
chance to become someone else, someone who didn't have to
(12:18):
go to school or work, someone who slayed dragons. The graphics, well,
they didn't exactly move up to the box. Think of
it this way. When one Atari graphics artist applied for
a job, she submitted an art sample in needle point.
It was a pretty close approximation of the boxy visuals
(12:39):
of the games. Kids, of course, did not care. They
grabbed the eight direction joystick with one red button and
played for hours. Most games didn't have a pause option,
so you'd have to wait for a break in the
action to go pee and hope your little brother or
sister wouldn't run into the living room to mess up
your progress. But by nineteen eighty two, and in spite
(13:00):
of Atari's massive success, there were signs that things could
be hadding in a different direction. Some competing systems, like
Mattel's in television, were gaining ground with better graphics. The
VCS was now five years old, a fairly long time
for a gaming system. The Space Invader's phenomenon was winding down.
Pac Man Fever would soon cool off. There was a
(13:24):
sense that Atari needed to shake things up. For one thing,
adventure games were growing in popularity. One title, which had
the very on the nose name of adventure had been
a big seller. Something that sent players on a quest
was appealing as opposed to fast twitch games like Space Invaders,
which required little more than hand eye coordination and rapid
(13:46):
fire alien destruction. For another, Warner Communications had a number
of companies in its portfolio. One of them was DC Comics,
home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and thousands of others.
Another was the Franklin Mint, which Warner bought in nineteen
eighty one with money earned from Atari's success. The Franklin
(14:07):
Mint struck limited edition collectibles like coins honoring great Americans,
which was sort of cool, and novelty thimbles, which absolutely
were not. There was an opportunity for all three companies
to work in tandem to keep Atari on top of
the gaming world, and when you owned a collectibles company,
you could come up with something special.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The prizes they actually did come up with for the
sword Quest series were pretty awesome. As I recall, there
was a talisman for however you want to take that,
and that was had enough jewels and gems in it
to be worth twenty five thousand dollars. Then there was
a chalice that also was bitjeweled and valued at twenty
(14:50):
five thousand dollars, which is pretty impressive. Then there was
a crown, although anybody who won that I don't know
if their head would fit in it. But the crown
was also had enough jewels and case in at I
think a cool twenty five thousand dollars. And then there
was the Philosopher's Stone, which I don't think anybody knew
what that was before Harry Potter introduced that concept everybody,
(15:10):
and that also had enough jewels and gems to be
worth twenty five thousand dollars. Those prizes were for each
of the four games, and then you had the grand
prize that after all four games had been won and
those prizes had been distributed, the grand prize was, of
course a sword. It was the Magic Sword, the Ultimate Sword,
(15:31):
because this is sword quest, so this was the quest
for the sword, and that sword had enough action going
on that it was actually valued at fifty thousand dollars
at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
A game series in which real prizes could be won,
prizes that were worth a lot of money. That was
the idea but what would it actually look like, feel like,
sound like. What they needed was someone who could bring
all these elements together with this ambitious multi media idea.
Needed was the Steven Spielberg of Atari. If Steven Spielberg
(16:05):
got really high on the job. In Atari's Sunnyvale, California campus,
the corporate powers that be were largely kept away from
the creative people, the programmers, writers, artists, and others who
made Atari's games come to life despite the system's needle
point like graphics and limited processing power. One of Atari's
(16:27):
secret weapons was Todd Frye.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Of all the characters at Atari, Todd Frye is the king.
He is the character among characters. I met Todd Frye
on January twelfth of nineteen eighty one, and we are
still friends today. We are actually very good friends. Todd
is an amazing person. But the first time I met
(16:52):
Todd Frye, that's quite a story, because what it was was,
on my first.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Day, Howard walked into the Atari offices full of enthusiasm.
What he found were Atari offices full of marijuana smoke.
In nineteen eighty Silicon Valley counterculture office environments were common,
and Atari was at the forefront. Put it this way,
no one was submitting a urine sample.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I was running around doing first day kind of stuff.
But towards the end of the day I finally settled
down and was just reading some manuals in the office waiting,
and then for the first time I encountered Todd Fry.
And what happens is Todd comes in. I'm alone in
the office. Todd comes in, slams the door behind him,
(17:36):
pulls out a little plastic bag, looks at me and says,
I'm going to get high in here right now. So
if you don't want to be around this, you need
to leave.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Todd did exactly that, lighting up on the campus of
a multi billion dollar corporate enterprise.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
So but I like to I really want to add
some context to that.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's Todd.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
We were not getting high and sitting around playing video games.
We were hammering down on really, really hard work. Some
of us. There was a culture of marijuana. Later on,
there was a culture of cocaine. Cocaine blew through our
part of Silicon Valley like a snowstorm when the money hit.
(18:21):
And that's real. I have no idea what was going
on in the other companies. I have no idea that
Atari was typical atypical. I'm pretty sure that smoking right
in the office and getting people offices and other buildings
when they complain was not typical. Yeah, there was a
bizarre culture of drug relaxed, intense work.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Todd is from Berkeley, California, and got bit by the
computer bug early on, early enough to have used punch cards.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I fell into computers the way some people fall into
rock guitar. Right, it's for me. Computers are God, that's
going to sound so weird. Computers are to me what
double neck guitars are to Jimmy Page. Computers are to
me what a stratocaster left handed stratus, right handed strat
is to Jimmy Hendrix. And yes, that is grandiose, is all.
(19:18):
But computers grabbed me by the back of my neck
and said we own you.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Todd loved computers, but wasn't exactly as passionate about school.
He dropped out of Berkeley High and was well without
a home for a bit. After spending some time as
a carpenter, Todd came to Atari in nineteen seventy nine
and quickly established himself as somewhat of an eccentric. He
got the nickname Arfman.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Arfman has to do with how I would just occasionally
make noises. I would bark, but I mean, you know, okay,
so there we are. We'd move to another building, and
I late at night of the day, I might be
working walking from one office to another and go our.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
But Todd's legend, it doesn't end there. His greatest legacy,
apart from game design, may have been his seeming rejection
of gravity. Todd had a pair of Nike running shoes
with some pretty good grip on the soles, and he
found that in one particular hallway, which was very narrow,
he could touch both walls with his feet. Then he
figured out he could actually get off the ground about
(20:23):
eight inches and shimmy his way forward.
Speaker 5 (20:26):
And then I could jump. I could hop and go forward.
I could hop forward by manipulating my center of gravity.
I could hop forward, pop my feet.
Speaker 6 (20:36):
Back on the wall. Bay. It's hilarious.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
I'm running down the hallways top of the floor bam, bam.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
You know, jumping about two feet each time. And then
I could hop upwards.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
So I'm sitting there on my feet are four feet
above the ground, and I'm like curled up next to
the ceiling, so that's, you know, just in the middle
of the hallway.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But like Acarus, Todd flew too close to the sun
or ceiling. One day while he was walking the walls,
he ran into the overhead sprinkler.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
One day, I was doing it in the hallway. Don't
usually do it in and in that hallway the modulo
of where sprinklers were laid out is there was a
sprinkler right around the middle of the ceiling. And when
I went to Dismount, I went up and forward and
right into a sprinkler with my forehead cut a inch
and a half gash in my temple and bleeding all
(21:30):
over the way head moons bleed. And that's the sprinkler lobotomy.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
That was the end of the wallwalking. I do not
remember doing it ever since.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Todd suffered no last incognitive damage that we know of.
And if you find Todd eccentric, well that's a part
of being on the cutting edge. Perhaps only Todd could
have conceived a sword quest, and it was a bold idea.
Instead of buying one game, consumers would feel compelled to
buy four. Each would have a comic book created by
(22:00):
DC comics, and like the elaborate box art, it would
help sell the fantasy.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
DC Comics was owned by Warrant Communications and we started
doing comic books.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
We were DC.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Comics, and instead of playing for bragging rights, gamers would
be playing for real, tangible prizes made by the Franklin Mint.
Each one would be appropriately regal. There was the Talisman,
a donut sized dial, the chalice which the winner could
sip from, the crown, the Philosopher's Stone made of white jade,
(22:32):
and finally, the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery, which would be
the grand prize on the line for the four winners.
Understand these weren't toys or trinkets. One hundred and fifty
thousand dollars was a lot of money then and now,
and the Franklin Mint specialized in handcrafting items that wouldn't
have looked out of place in a museum.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
The other thing that was all me was the contest
and prizes from Franklin Mint. Franklin was another cousin company,
and they make collectibles, and so it's like, why not
have contests built into the games and.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
Comic books for the games. We'll make it kind of.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
Literary and then we'll have collectible prizes for the contest,
and you know the whole I think it starts out.
I forget a lot, but it's a hero's journey in
a Grail quest.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
There's an interesting early idea that didn't quite make it
off the drawing board at first. Someone and Todd isn't
sure who had the idea to offer not just treasure,
but buried treasure, sending gamers off to far flung coordinates
where they could dig up the prizes. It felt appropriately
epic and kind of insane, actually, but Atari did issue
(23:43):
press material early on in which they promised the winners
would do just that, unearth buried loot. You can imagine
what Atari's lawyers thought of people, including kids, digging up
property or property they thought held a big prize. That
idea was abandoned, but the objective of awarding actual prizes stayed.
(24:06):
This wasn't totally unheard of at the time. Many Atari
games promised players a cool clothing patch if they submitted
proof of a high score, and there had been arcade
tournaments in which modest prize money was offered. Katari sponsored
a few of those, and even recognized players who set
records for blasting away at asteroids. The longest the record
(24:27):
holder Dennis Hernandez, who played for fifty hours and twelve minutes.
He was so dazed after he finished that he lost
consciousness and tumbled down a flight of stairs. But sword
Quest wouldn't be a physical endurance test. It was a
home game. That's really the only way it could have worked.
Because of the way the games were designed, players would
(24:49):
need to spend hours playing and studying them. You can't
do that at a pizza hunt. That the sword Quest
series would be mysic in nature was easy, but what
kind of story with the games? Tell Atari and Todd
were both slightly ahead of their time here too. In
May nineteen eighty two, just before the first game was
to be released, Conan the Barbarian hit theaters. It was
(25:13):
a massive and sincere sword and sorcery epics, darring Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the pulp hero. That same year, Mattel debuted
the Masters of the Universe toy line, featuring massively muscled
heroes and villains like he Man, Skeletor, and beast Man.
Dungeons and Dragons meanwhile, had been going strong for years
(25:34):
on the dining room tables of role playing enthusiasts. The
timing seemed perfect for a high fantasy game from Atari,
and it was also good timing for Warner Communications, which
was depending on Atari to keep their overall business thriving.
Warner was and is a powerhouse entertainment company, but their
movies of the era weren't doing all that well. They
(25:57):
had just had a big flop with Under the Rain,
an espionage comedy starring Chevy Chase and set against the
backdrop of actors auditioning to play munchkins in The Wizard
of Oz and no, it wasn't based on a true story.
Because of how important Atari was to the company, there
was no problem getting approval for their big multimedia gamble.
(26:20):
In fact, Warner saw the advantages of cross promoting their products,
and they had faith in Todd, who had just poured
it over the arcade Megaheit pac Man, which was a
huge success. At least that's probably what happened. Remember that
Todd hit his head really hard on that sprinkler.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
There was a proposal, there was a let's get the
comic book people and the you know, to a certain extent,
I was riding the wave for sword Quest of having
just had pac Man released right, so I may have
had some cred I don't really know, but I do
not remember the specifics of that.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
I really do not. I don't think I ever.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Went over to corporate HQ and said, here's my grab
scheme for the future of adventure games. I think I
wrote some docs and they went up one level and
just kind of got a green light.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Todd's idea was that each game would be centered on
four elements, Earth, fire, water, and air. Each would also
get slightly existential, focusing on a different philosophical or spiritual template.
The first Earth world was built around astrological signs. Later
games would take inspiration from the Kabbala or the Iching.
(27:34):
It was actually pretty heavy stuff for the era, which
was usually preoccupied with alien sports or shooting things, not
the meaning of life.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
One is that there is actually a lot of genuine
literary context behind it. Very ambitious. I mean, you know,
the Zodiac, the Kabbala, the Chakras, it's a grail quat,
it's a hero's journey, and it's all explicitly tied up
(28:04):
with those mythopoetic Joseph Campbell kind of components. So I
dragged in all of this cultural artifacts, this literacy. I mean,
it is so weird to hear me say that. But
I dragged in a very literate framework for sword Quest,
and I dragged in the puzzle and Franklin Mint and
(28:29):
the real things which I don't think had ever been done,
and tied that to the comic book. So there are
two completely separate things that I brought together. And then
we took the adventure aspect of run around to do
stuff and see what happens and have puzzles built into it.
And the twitch minigames include all that together. And just
(28:49):
like listing the number of ambitious sub things that I
merged into one, you know, set of dependencies, it sounds
like over ambitious.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
It's like she is what you got to lose.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Earth World would be unique in another way too. It
was an easy rebuttal for parents and psychologists who believed
video games were a waste of time maybe somewhere, but
a game in which you could win a prize worth
twenty five thousand dollars was a different story. And having
gamers feel compelled to buy four games was good too,
though technically they didn't have to.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
If you liked any of them, and you should start.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
At the beginning, Todd didn't work alone. He had programmers
like Dan Hichins to help create the games. Dan actually
programmed Earth World. Thanks to his efforts, that first game
was ready in time for its October nineteen eighty two
release date. But this wasn't just another Atari title. This
was something the company was hoping would usher in a
(29:50):
new era, one in which Atari was going to further
establish its marketplace dominance. Its games were, after all, bigger
than a lot of movies. Atari needed to make sure
everyone knew about the game. In order to do that,
they had to go big. New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel
(30:13):
was once the world's largest. At forty seven stories, It
loomed over Manhattan. American Royalty, like Clark Gables, stayed there,
so did British Royalty like Queen Elizabeth II. Waldorf, one
of the Heckling puppets on The Muppet Show was named
after it. There was and is a certain cultural significance
(30:34):
to the property, which is why Atari chose the Waldorf
to formally announce the arrival of sword Quest. Here's Howard again.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
When sword Quest came out, there was a huge splash
because they had the prizes, and that was the whole thing,
was the ad campaign for sword Quest, because it's not
much fun to have a contest nobody knows about, right,
So you've got to hype the hell out of it.
That's what you have to do with something like this.
So one great thing about sword Quest was it got
(31:05):
a tremendous marketing push because they needed to make everyone
aware and it's a great hook, so the splash was big.
It was really kind of a hype thing. I can
remember feeling a little jealous and thinking, man, that's really cool.
He's really getting a huge push for the game.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The press conference in the fall of nineteen eighty two
was like nothing the video game industry had ever seen,
although to be fair, the video game industry wasn't very old.
The company took over the hotel's grand ballroom, decorating it
with Zodiac iconography. Lights flashed and sand was tossed around,
which attendees probably had to shake out of their shoes.
(31:43):
Later on, as members of the press gathered, loud speakers
began playing a pre recorded audio drama that set the stage. Well,
we hoped there was existing audio. We couldn't locate any,
so you'll have to settle for this recreation.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
You may call us Mentor and mental.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
We would tell you of your destiny, a destiny that
will take you across four worlds. A world of earth spirits,
a world of fire, a world of water sprites, and lastly.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
A world of air.
Speaker 9 (32:12):
On each world you will encounter a challenge, perhaps more
than one. Surmounting these challenges will make you stronger, wiser,
more courageous, and in the end, will give you your heart's desire.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
This was high drama worthy of he Man or Conan,
and it wasn't over, according to an article published in
Video Gaming Illustrated. Journalists were then shown another set of
screens that displayed promotional artwork that helped explain the premise.
The two main characters were Tara and Tor, two adventurous
(32:46):
siblings looking to avenge the death of their parents at
the hands of King Tyrannus. A number of clues would
be hidden in each game. Find them, submit them to Atari,
and you could be invited to a playoff for the prizes.
Talk Sorry arfman I designed.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
The prizes according to a hero's journey path. A hero's
journey is a phrase you'd hear a lot about this
it's a mythological healing, growth, aspiration development, grail quest, Here's journey.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
So it had to start small and get big.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
So you had prizes for thieves, and prizes for warriors,
and prizes for Emperor King's prize for wizards. The price
for the wizards, you know as the Philosopher's Stone, ultimately
the ability to transmute.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
But it wouldn't be enough to just play the games.
Players would have to read the mini comic book included
in the box. Inside the comic were hidden words the
game would guide you to their location in the comic.
Play the game, read the comic, and you were on
your way. It was marketing genius, but Atari wasn't relying
solely on the press to get the word out. They
(33:58):
launched a full fledged promotional assault. Displays went up in
stores with cardboard swords promising one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in prizes. Members of the Atari Fan Club got notices,
Subscribers to Atari Age magazine were blasted with hype. The
burgeoning video game press was inundated. The question was would
(34:20):
gamers really care? After all, wasn't being a mindless diversion
The entire point of games a way to park your
brain and neutral What if people didn't want to conquer
King Tyrannus, or navigate water sprites, or avenge their parents' debts?
But they did. As the weeks and months rolled on,
it was clear that sword Quest was paying off. Atari
(34:43):
sold five hundred thousand copies of Earth World, a major
success by any metric. That was a half million people
who were willing to pay thirty four dollars for a
chance at winning twenty five thousand dollars or more. Across
the country, they settled into their shag carpeting, twisting their
joysticks to find the hidden virtual treasure that could be
exchanged for real treasure. Homework went by the wayside, so
(35:08):
did sleep Journey, cartridges, collected dust, Space Invaders was cast aside.
Sword Quest became a nationwide treasure hunt organized by the
biggest name in gaming. This wasn't just a chance for
a prize. It was a chance to validate a hobby
and passion, a chance for kids to tell their parents
that video games weren't a waste of time, that a
(35:30):
kid could maybe give his parents an allowance instead of
the other way around. The stakes were high for Atari, too,
Other game consoles were heading shelves. Consumers were complaining about
disappointing games like Karate, which had two crudely rendered stick
people fighting, or even pac Man, which didn't compare favorably
to the arcade version. If this contest struck a chord,
(35:52):
it would cement Atari's reputation. It could make that Blade
Runner future where Atari is on top a reality. It
could change the course of the gaming industry forever. But
the game was hard, so hard that out of those
half million players, just eight people found the right solution.
One by one. They began to fly out to Sunny
(36:14):
Vale to seek fame and fortune. Bert Wardahl was hoping
to be one of them, so were plenty of others.
But it wouldn't be long before sword Quest began to
spin out of control and introduce the biggest question of all.
How did all those prizes, valued at a total of
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars become something of a
lost treasure? Here's Howard.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
And so I had heard stories about these amazing things.
I saw a picture of them here and there. I
can honestly say that in my entire experience, in my
life so far, I have never actually been in the
same room with any of these items.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
And Todd Fry I never ended up seeing these prizes
in person. You know, it's actually interesting to think about
that there was a real abstraction where maybe Ivory Tower
and maybe disassociated or maybe my world was separate from
the mundane.
Speaker 6 (37:14):
Sorry, this is so weird. That's why I'm laughing at myself.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
But yeah, it would have been a good story if
I'd taken the sort of the sorcery and used to
chop out lives or yeah, not so much.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
This season on the Legend of sword Quest.
Speaker 8 (37:32):
It is a mystery, just purely because so much of
this is lost in the mists of time that gives
it a certain are of something special.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Night walk in, I just put it on a kitchen
tam on, Hey came here. I opened it up and
say what do you think? And I'm like, what's that?
My sister actually said that? Or was that a replica?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I said, no, I want it.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I won't.
Speaker 8 (37:48):
No.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
He never admits that it's fake.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
You see, he's thinking if it's a fake, that he's
a victim too, because he bought him somebody.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
Other people have pointed out that, well, that's not really
kind of legal you have to go through with.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
A contest, and he didn't even know there was a
contest going on. Spoil the lawyers went round in our
arms for a year before so many had told him, well,
you bought the company, you got to do something about this.
Speaker 7 (38:07):
He was saying, it's in legal boxes somewhere. We would
have to charge you legal research fees to go through
the boxes to figure out who owns what. I'm like,
I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Think there was ever any pictures of the actual items themselves,
besides the ones that were awarded the prize winners.
Speaker 8 (38:21):
There was a letter envelope just tucked in the side
of a shoebox, and I opened it and I found
those photos, so I knew what this was.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
How that is not the case. What happened to the
prizes is?
Speaker 10 (38:34):
The Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart
Podcasts and School of Humans. This episode was written by
Jake Rosson and hosted by Jamie Loftus producers are Miranda
Hawkins and Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, LC Crowley,
Brandon Barr, and Jason English. Our show editor is married
to audio engineering by Graham Gibson. Research and fact checking
(38:58):
by Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.
This episode was sound designed by Josh Fisher, mixing and
mastering by Miranda Hawkins. Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Voices
in this episode are provided by Dylan Fagan, Nick Rimes,
and Isaiah Pringle.
In nineteen eighty two, thirteen year old Bert war Doll
is looking through an Atari catalog. At the time, Atari
was the cutting edge in video games, promising an arcade
experience in your shag carpeted living room.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
The Atari video computer system is twenty contridges with thirteen
hundred game variations.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
You play on your own TV sect.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Bert sees something intriguing. It's an ad for Earthworld, the
first title in Atari's sword Quest series of games. Epic
and ambitious. Sword Quest promises one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in prizes split up among five finalists, with the
Sword of Ultimate Sorcery going to the grand prize winner.
(00:40):
Usually the prize for winning a game was getting yelled
at by your parents for staying at the arcade for
too long.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
I remember there was a photo like a game image.
The sword Quest Earthroll game is about the zodiac signs.
In this particular picture of the screen grab was the
Leo sign. It is like a colorful waterfall that you
have to kind of run through. That was my first
image of seeing sword Quests from that and as I recall,
they did say, you know there was a contest, you know,
(01:07):
win one hundred and fifty dollars dollars, you know, something
like that, And they didn't give a ton of details
about it. But it was exciting, of.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Course it was exciting. It was the most exciting thing
a thirteen year old could possibly hear. Real prizes for
playing a video game. Weren't games supposed to be brain
rotting wastes of time. The problem was that video games
didn't have drop dates yet. He knew it was supposed
to come out in October, but he didn't know the day.
So Burt has to try to find the game the
(01:37):
old fashioned way by calling every store within driving distance.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
Hello, kmart, Hey, do you have an Earth World?
Speaker 6 (01:49):
Do we have what Earth World?
Speaker 5 (01:51):
From?
Speaker 7 (01:52):
Atari?
Speaker 5 (01:53):
Earthworm?
Speaker 6 (01:54):
Earth World?
Speaker 5 (01:55):
Let me put you through to long care.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Bert calls every store he can think of, and then finally.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
JC Penny was the biggest store in our area that
carried Atari games, at least the closest to my house.
And I do remember calling them and asking them and
they said they were going to be carrying it, so
I knew when to go and it would be there.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
This was Bert's big Christmas story moment, except it's October
and he has to pay for it. With his own allowance,
but still he convinces his parents to drive him to J. C. Penny.
He leaps out of the car and runs toward the entrance. Inside,
past the clothing and the jewelry and the small appliances,
(02:37):
is the stores, video game department, a tiny glass encased
oasis of excitement, and a store full of socks.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
There was a big kiosk that had electronics. There was
electronic stuff surrounding the kiosk too, but it was in
the kiosk where the games where they were behind the counter,
but it was a glass count so you could see
the games lined up in there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Bert scans the shelves, past Asteroids, past Night Driver, past
Breakout until he sees it Earthworld. The cover has a
muscular man and woman wielding swords, a hovering head with
an eye patch, and a minotaur. It was very van
mural Rock and Roll, an image to the conjured up
(03:18):
Everything and adventure game should be. Bert fishes the money
out of his pocket, grabs the game, and dashes back
out to the car. On the drive home, he tears
into the plastic wrap, scanning the manual.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
It seemed to take forever to drive home because I
was so excited to play a new game. But I
had that time to look at everything I could look
at the catalog, I could read the instructions. That's what
I did. I spent that time looking at everything I could.
And this game was also different because it came with
a comic book, which was unusual.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah, a comic book, which would become important later. At home,
he pushes the cartridge into his Atari twenty six hundred,
a shimmering sword appears on screen.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Well, I was definitely super excited by this time. The
Atari had been moved to my bedroom. Unfortunately, I had
a black and white TV at the time, not color,
so I couldn't see it. But when you plug the
game in for the first time, there's this magical, colorful
sword that comes on the screen, which and color looks
pretty impressive, even for Atari twenty six hundred. And then
you press the button to get started, and there you are.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Bert became immersed in a world of sorcery and magic,
wizards and demons, and if he could navigate it successfully.
There was a prize at the end for this first game.
It was a talisman, a solid gold pendant valued at
twenty five thousand dollars or the equivalent of about eighty
thousand dollars today. That was more than a lot of
(04:45):
people made in an entire year. For the first time,
a home video game could pay off with a real,
tangible reward, a prize that held enough value to pay
for college or a new car. But what started as
a video game promotion would quickly become one of the
most controversial moments in eighties pop culture, with a lot
(05:05):
of broken promises, urban myths, payoffs, and a central mystery
that's consumed fans for decades, a mystery that involves real,
not imagined lost treasure. Atari promised tens of thousands of
players the chance to have a massive sword to be
crowned the king of video games. That wasn't exactly what happened. Bert,
(05:29):
of course, didn't know any of this, not yet. Right now,
there's no conspiracy theories, no accusations, no crestfallen kids. He
wraps his hand around the joystick, keeps his thumb hovering
over the red button, and hits start. The sword Quest
competition is about to begin, and video games will never
(05:50):
be the same. For iHeartRadio, this is the legend of
sword Quest. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus and this is
episode one, The Sword and the Stoned. In nineteen eighty two,
Et was the film everyone wanted to see. Spider Man
(06:12):
was one of the most popular comic book characters. Journey
was a big concert act. All three of these things
had something in common. They were also available as games.
You could play on the Atari video computer system. Yes,
you could play as a member of Journey, although the
very limited sound chips of the time didn't really do
their music justice. Atari wasn't just the biggest thing in gaming,
(06:40):
It really was the only thing in gaming. Sure they
were rival home game consoles, but none could approach Atari's
market dominance or its cultural cachet. Atari was like Kleenex.
People didn't play video games. They played Atari. Walk into
a McDonald and you could grab a special at Tari
scratch off ticket to win free games. When politicians advocated
(07:04):
for high tech business development to create jobs, the press
dubbed them Atari democrats. When Harrison Ford runs through the
rainy Neon Alleys in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, audiences catch
a glimpse of a massive Atari logo, that three line
graphic that promised a trip into a world of unlimited imagination.
(07:25):
That film took place in twenty nineteen, meaning Atari was
set to rule the gaming realm for a long time
to come. The logo being in Scott's movie was no accident.
Blade Runner was released by Giant Movie Studio Warner Brothers,
and Warner Brothers was owned by Warner Communications, a massive
media conglomerate that also owned, among other things, Atari. But
(07:49):
Atari wasn't some up and coming division. In the first
nine months of nineteen eighty two, it was responsible for
nearly fifty percent of Warner's overall revenue, was making more
money than their films were, with cash registers ringing up
over a billion dollars in systems and games. That was
the first Golden Age of video games. Though it wasn't
(08:10):
the first home console, Atari was for many people the
only way to play, and.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
That was exciting. When I was at Atari, we were
literally creating and defining the medium of interactive television entertainment
that had never happened before. Until that point, television was
a passive entertainment form one hundred percent, and we turned
it into an active entertainment form, and that was revolutionary
(08:38):
in ways they're still rippling through society.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
That's Howard Scott Warshaw. Howard was a game engineer for
Atari who was responsible for some of their biggest hits,
like a tie in game for Raiders of the Lost
Dark and Yars Revenge. The Yar of the title was
just the first name of the Atari CEO, Ray Kassar,
spelled backwards. That's Howard's humor. When he programmed Raiders, he
(09:01):
got his hand on a bullwhip to crack around the offices.
It also meant meaning Steven Spielberg to get the director's approval.
When Spielberg was nowhere to be seen, Howard gave himself
a tour of the studio.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I walked everywhere. I walked in and out as sets.
I saw my favorite shows. I stole things off of sets.
I hope the statute has run on that, but I
actually stole little pieces on a memorabilia from some of
the sets. It was just an amazing day to be
It was like a dream tour of the studio and
(09:33):
at the end I get to talk to Steven.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Spielberg to put Atari's status in perspective. Remember that video
rental stores weren't on every corner just yet. Many homes
didn't have cable television. Electronic home entertainment was limited to
what was on TV and whatever was playing on your
stereo or walkman. Having an Atari system was major.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Atari wasn't the first video game system. The Atari VCS
was not the first home video game system, but it
was the first home video game system to hit the stratosphere.
It was ubiquitous, It was everywhere.
Speaker 8 (10:08):
It was.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It was millions and millions and millions and millions of
units out in homes, which no one had ever done
before with a video game system. Because Atari was a
wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Communications, which is a huge conglomerate,
Warner was able to roll their Atari money into their
overall corporate picture. People knew Warner was doing really well.
(10:30):
Nobody knew just what an amazing cash fountain Atari had
turned into.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
The Atari Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari twenty
six hundred, was released in nineteen seventy seven. The system
originally retailed for about two hundred dollars or almost one
thousand dollars today. While it sold well initially, it didn't
really take off until the nineteen eighty release of Space Invaders,
which had players shooting an endless Armada of Aliens. You
(11:00):
can't really say enough about the arcade version of Space
Invaders as a phenomenon. It grows to nearly four billion
dollars by nineteen eighty three, which makes it one of
the most successful entertainment properties in history, not just games,
any entertainment property. When Atari released a home version, it
established them as the company to beat. No longer did
(11:23):
Space Invaders fans have to brave Zenie arcades or pay
a cover charge at the bar to get their hands
on the game. Thanks in part to Space Invaders, by
nineteen eighty two, fifteen million Atari VCS systems had been sold.
Players would flip a toggle style switch on their system,
which resembled a station wagon thanks to the faux wood
grain design. There was a switch to select whether you
(11:45):
had a black and white or color television, and another
switch to select the difficulty setting. It was like being
in a cockpit.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Why didn't I have them?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Then you'd select a cartridge from your collection and jam
it into the center of the concert. Space Invaders, Raiders,
Centipede asteroids, all of them with amazing painted art from
Atari's in house illustrators, some of whom went on to
careers in fine art. The art promised danger, excitement, the
chance to become someone else, someone who didn't have to
(12:18):
go to school or work, someone who slayed dragons. The graphics, well,
they didn't exactly move up to the box. Think of
it this way. When one Atari graphics artist applied for
a job, she submitted an art sample in needle point.
It was a pretty close approximation of the boxy visuals
(12:39):
of the games. Kids, of course, did not care. They
grabbed the eight direction joystick with one red button and
played for hours. Most games didn't have a pause option,
so you'd have to wait for a break in the
action to go pee and hope your little brother or
sister wouldn't run into the living room to mess up
your progress. But by nineteen eighty two, and in spite
(13:00):
of Atari's massive success, there were signs that things could
be hadding in a different direction. Some competing systems, like
Mattel's in television, were gaining ground with better graphics. The
VCS was now five years old, a fairly long time
for a gaming system. The Space Invader's phenomenon was winding down.
Pac Man Fever would soon cool off. There was a
(13:24):
sense that Atari needed to shake things up. For one thing,
adventure games were growing in popularity. One title, which had
the very on the nose name of adventure had been
a big seller. Something that sent players on a quest
was appealing as opposed to fast twitch games like Space Invaders,
which required little more than hand eye coordination and rapid
(13:46):
fire alien destruction. For another, Warner Communications had a number
of companies in its portfolio. One of them was DC Comics,
home to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and thousands of others.
Another was the Franklin Mint, which Warner bought in nineteen
eighty one with money earned from Atari's success. The Franklin
(14:07):
Mint struck limited edition collectibles like coins honoring great Americans,
which was sort of cool, and novelty thimbles, which absolutely
were not. There was an opportunity for all three companies
to work in tandem to keep Atari on top of
the gaming world, and when you owned a collectibles company,
you could come up with something special.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The prizes they actually did come up with for the
sword Quest series were pretty awesome. As I recall, there
was a talisman for however you want to take that,
and that was had enough jewels and gems in it
to be worth twenty five thousand dollars. Then there was
a chalice that also was bitjeweled and valued at twenty
(14:50):
five thousand dollars, which is pretty impressive. Then there was
a crown, although anybody who won that I don't know
if their head would fit in it. But the crown
was also had enough jewels and case in at I
think a cool twenty five thousand dollars. And then there
was the Philosopher's Stone, which I don't think anybody knew
what that was before Harry Potter introduced that concept everybody,
(15:10):
and that also had enough jewels and gems to be
worth twenty five thousand dollars. Those prizes were for each
of the four games, and then you had the grand
prize that after all four games had been won and
those prizes had been distributed, the grand prize was, of
course a sword. It was the Magic Sword, the Ultimate Sword,
(15:31):
because this is sword quest, so this was the quest
for the sword, and that sword had enough action going
on that it was actually valued at fifty thousand dollars
at the time.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
A game series in which real prizes could be won,
prizes that were worth a lot of money. That was
the idea but what would it actually look like, feel like,
sound like. What they needed was someone who could bring
all these elements together with this ambitious multi media idea.
Needed was the Steven Spielberg of Atari. If Steven Spielberg
(16:05):
got really high on the job. In Atari's Sunnyvale, California campus,
the corporate powers that be were largely kept away from
the creative people, the programmers, writers, artists, and others who
made Atari's games come to life despite the system's needle
point like graphics and limited processing power. One of Atari's
(16:27):
secret weapons was Todd Frye.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Of all the characters at Atari, Todd Frye is the king.
He is the character among characters. I met Todd Frye
on January twelfth of nineteen eighty one, and we are
still friends today. We are actually very good friends. Todd
is an amazing person. But the first time I met
(16:52):
Todd Frye, that's quite a story, because what it was was,
on my first.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Day, Howard walked into the Atari offices full of enthusiasm.
What he found were Atari offices full of marijuana smoke.
In nineteen eighty Silicon Valley counterculture office environments were common,
and Atari was at the forefront. Put it this way,
no one was submitting a urine sample.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
I was running around doing first day kind of stuff.
But towards the end of the day I finally settled
down and was just reading some manuals in the office waiting,
and then for the first time I encountered Todd Fry.
And what happens is Todd comes in. I'm alone in
the office. Todd comes in, slams the door behind him,
(17:36):
pulls out a little plastic bag, looks at me and says,
I'm going to get high in here right now. So
if you don't want to be around this, you need
to leave.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Todd did exactly that, lighting up on the campus of
a multi billion dollar corporate enterprise.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
So but I like to I really want to add
some context to that.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's Todd.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
We were not getting high and sitting around playing video games.
We were hammering down on really, really hard work. Some
of us. There was a culture of marijuana. Later on,
there was a culture of cocaine. Cocaine blew through our
part of Silicon Valley like a snowstorm when the money hit.
(18:21):
And that's real. I have no idea what was going
on in the other companies. I have no idea that
Atari was typical atypical. I'm pretty sure that smoking right
in the office and getting people offices and other buildings
when they complain was not typical. Yeah, there was a
bizarre culture of drug relaxed, intense work.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Todd is from Berkeley, California, and got bit by the
computer bug early on, early enough to have used punch cards.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
I fell into computers the way some people fall into
rock guitar. Right, it's for me. Computers are God, that's
going to sound so weird. Computers are to me what
double neck guitars are to Jimmy Page. Computers are to
me what a stratocaster left handed stratus, right handed strat
is to Jimmy Hendrix. And yes, that is grandiose, is all.
(19:18):
But computers grabbed me by the back of my neck
and said we own you.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Todd loved computers, but wasn't exactly as passionate about school.
He dropped out of Berkeley High and was well without
a home for a bit. After spending some time as
a carpenter, Todd came to Atari in nineteen seventy nine
and quickly established himself as somewhat of an eccentric. He
got the nickname Arfman.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
Arfman has to do with how I would just occasionally
make noises. I would bark, but I mean, you know, okay,
so there we are. We'd move to another building, and
I late at night of the day, I might be
working walking from one office to another and go our.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
But Todd's legend, it doesn't end there. His greatest legacy,
apart from game design, may have been his seeming rejection
of gravity. Todd had a pair of Nike running shoes
with some pretty good grip on the soles, and he
found that in one particular hallway, which was very narrow,
he could touch both walls with his feet. Then he
figured out he could actually get off the ground about
(20:23):
eight inches and shimmy his way forward.
Speaker 5 (20:26):
And then I could jump. I could hop and go forward.
I could hop forward by manipulating my center of gravity.
I could hop forward, pop my feet.
Speaker 6 (20:36):
Back on the wall. Bay. It's hilarious.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
I'm running down the hallways top of the floor bam, bam.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
You know, jumping about two feet each time. And then
I could hop upwards.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
So I'm sitting there on my feet are four feet
above the ground, and I'm like curled up next to
the ceiling, so that's, you know, just in the middle
of the hallway.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
But like Acarus, Todd flew too close to the sun
or ceiling. One day while he was walking the walls,
he ran into the overhead sprinkler.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
One day, I was doing it in the hallway. Don't
usually do it in and in that hallway the modulo
of where sprinklers were laid out is there was a
sprinkler right around the middle of the ceiling. And when
I went to Dismount, I went up and forward and
right into a sprinkler with my forehead cut a inch
and a half gash in my temple and bleeding all
(21:30):
over the way head moons bleed. And that's the sprinkler lobotomy.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
That was the end of the wallwalking. I do not
remember doing it ever since.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Todd suffered no last incognitive damage that we know of.
And if you find Todd eccentric, well that's a part
of being on the cutting edge. Perhaps only Todd could
have conceived a sword quest, and it was a bold idea.
Instead of buying one game, consumers would feel compelled to
buy four. Each would have a comic book created by
(22:00):
DC comics, and like the elaborate box art, it would
help sell the fantasy.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
DC Comics was owned by Warrant Communications and we started
doing comic books.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
We were DC.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Comics, and instead of playing for bragging rights, gamers would
be playing for real, tangible prizes made by the Franklin Mint.
Each one would be appropriately regal. There was the Talisman,
a donut sized dial, the chalice which the winner could
sip from, the crown, the Philosopher's Stone made of white jade,
(22:32):
and finally, the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery, which would be
the grand prize on the line for the four winners.
Understand these weren't toys or trinkets. One hundred and fifty
thousand dollars was a lot of money then and now,
and the Franklin Mint specialized in handcrafting items that wouldn't
have looked out of place in a museum.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
The other thing that was all me was the contest
and prizes from Franklin Mint. Franklin was another cousin company,
and they make collectibles, and so it's like, why not
have contests built into the games and.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
Comic books for the games. We'll make it kind of.
Speaker 5 (23:09):
Literary and then we'll have collectible prizes for the contest,
and you know the whole I think it starts out.
I forget a lot, but it's a hero's journey in
a Grail quest.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
There's an interesting early idea that didn't quite make it
off the drawing board at first. Someone and Todd isn't
sure who had the idea to offer not just treasure,
but buried treasure, sending gamers off to far flung coordinates
where they could dig up the prizes. It felt appropriately
epic and kind of insane, actually, but Atari did issue
(23:43):
press material early on in which they promised the winners
would do just that, unearth buried loot. You can imagine
what Atari's lawyers thought of people, including kids, digging up
property or property they thought held a big prize. That
idea was abandoned, but the objective of awarding actual prizes stayed.
(24:06):
This wasn't totally unheard of at the time. Many Atari
games promised players a cool clothing patch if they submitted
proof of a high score, and there had been arcade
tournaments in which modest prize money was offered. Katari sponsored
a few of those, and even recognized players who set
records for blasting away at asteroids. The longest the record
(24:27):
holder Dennis Hernandez, who played for fifty hours and twelve minutes.
He was so dazed after he finished that he lost
consciousness and tumbled down a flight of stairs. But sword
Quest wouldn't be a physical endurance test. It was a
home game. That's really the only way it could have worked.
Because of the way the games were designed, players would
(24:49):
need to spend hours playing and studying them. You can't
do that at a pizza hunt. That the sword Quest
series would be mysic in nature was easy, but what
kind of story with the games? Tell Atari and Todd
were both slightly ahead of their time here too. In
May nineteen eighty two, just before the first game was
to be released, Conan the Barbarian hit theaters. It was
(25:13):
a massive and sincere sword and sorcery epics, darring Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the pulp hero. That same year, Mattel debuted
the Masters of the Universe toy line, featuring massively muscled
heroes and villains like he Man, Skeletor, and beast Man.
Dungeons and Dragons meanwhile, had been going strong for years
(25:34):
on the dining room tables of role playing enthusiasts. The
timing seemed perfect for a high fantasy game from Atari,
and it was also good timing for Warner Communications, which
was depending on Atari to keep their overall business thriving.
Warner was and is a powerhouse entertainment company, but their
movies of the era weren't doing all that well. They
(25:57):
had just had a big flop with Under the Rain,
an espionage comedy starring Chevy Chase and set against the
backdrop of actors auditioning to play munchkins in The Wizard
of Oz and no, it wasn't based on a true story.
Because of how important Atari was to the company, there
was no problem getting approval for their big multimedia gamble.
(26:20):
In fact, Warner saw the advantages of cross promoting their products,
and they had faith in Todd, who had just poured
it over the arcade Megaheit pac Man, which was a
huge success. At least that's probably what happened. Remember that
Todd hit his head really hard on that sprinkler.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
There was a proposal, there was a let's get the
comic book people and the you know, to a certain extent,
I was riding the wave for sword Quest of having
just had pac Man released right, so I may have
had some cred I don't really know, but I do
not remember the specifics of that.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
I really do not. I don't think I ever.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
Went over to corporate HQ and said, here's my grab
scheme for the future of adventure games. I think I
wrote some docs and they went up one level and
just kind of got a green light.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Todd's idea was that each game would be centered on
four elements, Earth, fire, water, and air. Each would also
get slightly existential, focusing on a different philosophical or spiritual template.
The first Earth world was built around astrological signs. Later
games would take inspiration from the Kabbala or the Iching.
(27:34):
It was actually pretty heavy stuff for the era, which
was usually preoccupied with alien sports or shooting things, not
the meaning of life.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
One is that there is actually a lot of genuine
literary context behind it. Very ambitious. I mean, you know,
the Zodiac, the Kabbala, the Chakras, it's a grail quat,
it's a hero's journey, and it's all explicitly tied up
(28:04):
with those mythopoetic Joseph Campbell kind of components. So I
dragged in all of this cultural artifacts, this literacy. I mean,
it is so weird to hear me say that. But
I dragged in a very literate framework for sword Quest,
and I dragged in the puzzle and Franklin Mint and
(28:29):
the real things which I don't think had ever been done,
and tied that to the comic book. So there are
two completely separate things that I brought together. And then
we took the adventure aspect of run around to do
stuff and see what happens and have puzzles built into it.
And the twitch minigames include all that together. And just
(28:49):
like listing the number of ambitious sub things that I
merged into one, you know, set of dependencies, it sounds
like over ambitious.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
It's like she is what you got to lose.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Earth World would be unique in another way too. It
was an easy rebuttal for parents and psychologists who believed
video games were a waste of time maybe somewhere, but
a game in which you could win a prize worth
twenty five thousand dollars was a different story. And having
gamers feel compelled to buy four games was good too,
though technically they didn't have to.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
If you liked any of them, and you should start.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
At the beginning, Todd didn't work alone. He had programmers
like Dan Hichins to help create the games. Dan actually
programmed Earth World. Thanks to his efforts, that first game
was ready in time for its October nineteen eighty two
release date. But this wasn't just another Atari title. This
was something the company was hoping would usher in a
(29:50):
new era, one in which Atari was going to further
establish its marketplace dominance. Its games were, after all, bigger
than a lot of movies. Atari needed to make sure
everyone knew about the game. In order to do that,
they had to go big. New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel
(30:13):
was once the world's largest. At forty seven stories, It
loomed over Manhattan. American Royalty, like Clark Gables, stayed there,
so did British Royalty like Queen Elizabeth II. Waldorf, one
of the Heckling puppets on The Muppet Show was named
after it. There was and is a certain cultural significance
(30:34):
to the property, which is why Atari chose the Waldorf
to formally announce the arrival of sword Quest. Here's Howard again.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
When sword Quest came out, there was a huge splash
because they had the prizes, and that was the whole thing,
was the ad campaign for sword Quest, because it's not
much fun to have a contest nobody knows about, right,
So you've got to hype the hell out of it.
That's what you have to do with something like this.
So one great thing about sword Quest was it got
(31:05):
a tremendous marketing push because they needed to make everyone
aware and it's a great hook, so the splash was big.
It was really kind of a hype thing. I can
remember feeling a little jealous and thinking, man, that's really cool.
He's really getting a huge push for the game.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The press conference in the fall of nineteen eighty two
was like nothing the video game industry had ever seen,
although to be fair, the video game industry wasn't very old.
The company took over the hotel's grand ballroom, decorating it
with Zodiac iconography. Lights flashed and sand was tossed around,
which attendees probably had to shake out of their shoes.
(31:43):
Later on, as members of the press gathered, loud speakers
began playing a pre recorded audio drama that set the stage. Well,
we hoped there was existing audio. We couldn't locate any,
so you'll have to settle for this recreation.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
You may call us Mentor and mental.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
We would tell you of your destiny, a destiny that
will take you across four worlds. A world of earth spirits,
a world of fire, a world of water sprites, and lastly.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
A world of air.
Speaker 9 (32:12):
On each world you will encounter a challenge, perhaps more
than one. Surmounting these challenges will make you stronger, wiser,
more courageous, and in the end, will give you your heart's desire.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
This was high drama worthy of he Man or Conan,
and it wasn't over, according to an article published in
Video Gaming Illustrated. Journalists were then shown another set of
screens that displayed promotional artwork that helped explain the premise.
The two main characters were Tara and Tor, two adventurous
(32:46):
siblings looking to avenge the death of their parents at
the hands of King Tyrannus. A number of clues would
be hidden in each game. Find them, submit them to Atari,
and you could be invited to a playoff for the prizes.
Talk Sorry arfman I designed.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
The prizes according to a hero's journey path. A hero's
journey is a phrase you'd hear a lot about this
it's a mythological healing, growth, aspiration development, grail quest, Here's journey.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
So it had to start small and get big.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
So you had prizes for thieves, and prizes for warriors,
and prizes for Emperor King's prize for wizards. The price
for the wizards, you know as the Philosopher's Stone, ultimately
the ability to transmute.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
But it wouldn't be enough to just play the games.
Players would have to read the mini comic book included
in the box. Inside the comic were hidden words the
game would guide you to their location in the comic.
Play the game, read the comic, and you were on
your way. It was marketing genius, but Atari wasn't relying
solely on the press to get the word out. They
(33:58):
launched a full fledged promotional assault. Displays went up in
stores with cardboard swords promising one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars in prizes. Members of the Atari Fan Club got notices,
Subscribers to Atari Age magazine were blasted with hype. The
burgeoning video game press was inundated. The question was would
(34:20):
gamers really care? After all, wasn't being a mindless diversion
The entire point of games a way to park your
brain and neutral What if people didn't want to conquer
King Tyrannus, or navigate water sprites, or avenge their parents' debts?
But they did. As the weeks and months rolled on,
it was clear that sword Quest was paying off. Atari
(34:43):
sold five hundred thousand copies of Earth World, a major
success by any metric. That was a half million people
who were willing to pay thirty four dollars for a
chance at winning twenty five thousand dollars or more. Across
the country, they settled into their shag carpeting, twisting their
joysticks to find the hidden virtual treasure that could be
exchanged for real treasure. Homework went by the wayside, so
(35:08):
did sleep Journey, cartridges, collected dust, Space Invaders was cast aside.
Sword Quest became a nationwide treasure hunt organized by the
biggest name in gaming. This wasn't just a chance for
a prize. It was a chance to validate a hobby
and passion, a chance for kids to tell their parents
that video games weren't a waste of time, that a
(35:30):
kid could maybe give his parents an allowance instead of
the other way around. The stakes were high for Atari, too,
Other game consoles were heading shelves. Consumers were complaining about
disappointing games like Karate, which had two crudely rendered stick
people fighting, or even pac Man, which didn't compare favorably
to the arcade version. If this contest struck a chord,
(35:52):
it would cement Atari's reputation. It could make that Blade
Runner future where Atari is on top a reality. It
could change the course of the gaming industry forever. But
the game was hard, so hard that out of those
half million players, just eight people found the right solution.
One by one. They began to fly out to Sunny
(36:14):
Vale to seek fame and fortune. Bert Wardahl was hoping
to be one of them, so were plenty of others.
But it wouldn't be long before sword Quest began to
spin out of control and introduce the biggest question of all.
How did all those prizes, valued at a total of
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars become something of a
lost treasure? Here's Howard.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
And so I had heard stories about these amazing things.
I saw a picture of them here and there. I
can honestly say that in my entire experience, in my
life so far, I have never actually been in the
same room with any of these items.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
And Todd Fry I never ended up seeing these prizes
in person. You know, it's actually interesting to think about
that there was a real abstraction where maybe Ivory Tower
and maybe disassociated or maybe my world was separate from
the mundane.
Speaker 6 (37:14):
Sorry, this is so weird. That's why I'm laughing at myself.
Speaker 5 (37:18):
But yeah, it would have been a good story if
I'd taken the sort of the sorcery and used to
chop out lives or yeah, not so much.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
This season on the Legend of sword Quest.
Speaker 8 (37:32):
It is a mystery, just purely because so much of
this is lost in the mists of time that gives
it a certain are of something special.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Night walk in, I just put it on a kitchen
tam on, Hey came here. I opened it up and
say what do you think? And I'm like, what's that?
My sister actually said that? Or was that a replica?
Speaker 1 (37:46):
I said, no, I want it.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
I won't.
Speaker 8 (37:48):
No.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
He never admits that it's fake.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
You see, he's thinking if it's a fake, that he's
a victim too, because he bought him somebody.
Speaker 7 (37:53):
Other people have pointed out that, well, that's not really
kind of legal you have to go through with.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
A contest, and he didn't even know there was a
contest going on. Spoil the lawyers went round in our
arms for a year before so many had told him, well,
you bought the company, you got to do something about this.
Speaker 7 (38:07):
He was saying, it's in legal boxes somewhere. We would
have to charge you legal research fees to go through
the boxes to figure out who owns what. I'm like,
I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Think there was ever any pictures of the actual items themselves,
besides the ones that were awarded the prize winners.
Speaker 8 (38:21):
There was a letter envelope just tucked in the side
of a shoebox, and I opened it and I found
those photos, so I knew what this was.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
How that is not the case. What happened to the
prizes is?
Speaker 10 (38:34):
The Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart
Podcasts and School of Humans. This episode was written by
Jake Rosson and hosted by Jamie Loftus producers are Miranda
Hawkins and Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, LC Crowley,
Brandon Barr, and Jason English. Our show editor is married
to audio engineering by Graham Gibson. Research and fact checking
(38:58):
by Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.
This episode was sound designed by Josh Fisher, mixing and
mastering by Miranda Hawkins. Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Voices
in this episode are provided by Dylan Fagan, Nick Rimes,
and Isaiah Pringle.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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