SwordQuest 1982, 83/Atari ...Review by Polas - 5/11/03...

In the latter days of the single-screen high score era, Atari decided to go in a bold new direction. Unfortunately, that direction included E.T. and the craptacular 2600 version of Pac-Man, which basically led to the death of video games until Nintendo came along. In that respect, their idea for a 4-part adventure series looks a little less crappy by comparison. I mean, 4 games, multi-room dungeons, items, full color comic books, all in the span of a year or so? How could it go wrong? Well, we'll get to that. So begins the saga of SwordQuest.

After much deliberation, or perhaps one too many Earth, Wind & Fire albums, Atari came up with the idea to release a series of four games, each one based on one of the four elements. There actually was a story to this, and I know for a fact that the first two games, Earthworld and Fireworld, came with miniature, full-length color DC comic books. There were actually ways to trigger clues to appear, at least in the first two games, that tied into the comics. Two numbers would appear along with a snazzy medley on a psychadelic background, which corresponded to a page and panel of the comic that contained a hidden word(s). Atari also ran some sort of contest, which was the style at the time along with tying onions to your belt, awarding prizes to whomever beat the games first. But as I mentioned, Atari soon headed down the crapper. Waterworld was sparsely released before being pulled altogether, and is extremely rare. Airworld never saw the light of day.

.....

.....

And now, the games themselves. The object of the SwordQuest games were to find a bunch of items in multicolored rooms, and to place those items in other multicolored rooms. I'm serious, that's it. The rainbow comic clues were supposed to help you. If you did everything right, you would get the Warrior sword that the golden-haired twins in the comic were seeking in order to avenge their parents' death, or something to that effect, it all becomes the same after while. Once you got that sword, you had beaten the game, but the game didn't stop nor did it acknowledge that you beat the game. Gee, wonder why this barely got past the second game out of four.

One thing I will say is that the items had uses. This may not seem big to you, but back in the days of gold bars and money bags that didn't do jack shit, this was a pretty big step. Now, I'm not saying all of the items were useful. As far as I could tell, all the shoes do are make your footsteps not make any noise. Some of the crap seemed like it was just there to piss you off, one more thing that had to be moved from the green room to the pink room. The best part was trying to guess what the items were. I know, let's play a game. I'll try to guess what they are, then you guess, then you can highlight the text under my guess to see who was closer. And, go!

DEATH COBRA A: ROPE

WAFFLE IRON A: CHALICE

LIGHT BULB A: NECKLACE

NO IDEA A: Seriously, I don't know what the hell this is.

Stuff like the rope and grappling hook seem to have no use, and like I said, some items like the shoes go the extra effort to make themselves useless. But there's a key that gives you access to more rooms, an effect shared by the Chalice in Fireworld. Some of the armor you'll see will protect you from the mini-games. Yes, I said mini-games. It's probably beginning to get a bit confusing at this point, if it wasn't already, so at this point I'll tackle things game by game.

.....

.....

SwordQuest: Earthworld - At the outset, Atari was still partly grounded in the realm of coherence. Earthworld consisted of twelve rooms, each one corresponding to a different zodiac symbol. Pressing the button in any of these rooms will take you into a chamber containing items and such, and turn you into a black square. Upon traveling through enough of these rooms, your little bald hero ... wait a minute, that hero bears more than a striking resemblance to the dancin' bowler from Atari Bowling. Damn you Atari, cutting costs all over ... hey, wait a minute. 'Striking' resemblance? Bowling? Ahahaha, I'm too good. I also get distracted easily. Anyhoo, four of the rooms contain trials, in which you must traverse the currents of Pisces, avoid the horns of Taurus .... eh, fuck it. You bob and weave through flying dots and lines.

Those bob and weave ones are OK, at least if you have the lamp to make the dots and lines visible. The real pains in the ass are the fruity waterfall and the pink platform hop. The platform hop restricts you to moving in one direction (up) with a really annoying 'blip' motion, while the platforms are changing speeds and questionably splitting into two or disappearing, often while you're standing on them. The waterfall one isn't as bad, it just requires good timing to run through the little opening, although they do get proceedingly thicker. This is probably the best SwordQuest game, and while that isn't saying a whole hell of a lot, you'll be begging for it once we're done with the next one.

.....

.....

SwordQuest: Fireworld - This is where Atari presumably got bored of the whole idea and it all fell into anarchy. I'm sure you've noticed a few things right off the bat. First and foremost, the hero has inexplicably changed into a naked black man. Unless I missed the part of the comic that says anyone who enters Fireworld gets one hell of a tan, this lack of continuity is unacceptable. Plus, you're driving away about 75% of the SwordQuest fanbase, who only got into the series because the Bowling guy was in it. You can also see that the room colors are a lot butt uglier, and that there are different amounts of pathways. You see, I've 'beaten' Earthworld a few times, most of them by accident, because there's some semblance of order to the rooms. I have no idea what the hell is going on in Fireworld. And Tyrannus help you if you find the Chalice.

That's pretty much how things go from there. I know it's possible to beat Fireworld, and I'm fairly sure you need to utilize the nutty Chalice to do so, but damned if I'm about to try just for this review. There are also trials in this game, and unlike the last one, there's one in every room. However, the rooms have nothing more to do with the Zodiac, and are just slapped together with those weird splotches in the middle. You can sometimes warp if you keep running into them, I don't know if that was intended or if it's a glitch, although I definitely have a guess. The trials are ... interesting, as you can see, most of them have to do with throwing things at evil birds, keeping a stick away from evil birds, or using a colorful box to catch evil birds.

My apologies, that one on the left lets you shoot dots at evil snakes. The 'music' during the trials is also incredibly annoying, especially when you miss or get hit. It's here that things begin to get murky, and not just because of the world we're about to enter. While I did own Earthworld and Fireworld for my old 2600, Waterworld I only became aware of with the advent of the Internet. Therefore, I know even less about it than I do about the last two. But that's OK, I probably still know more than Atari did while they were making it.

SwordQuest: Waterworld - This game is both good and bad at the same time, at least compared to the last two. Thankfully, the godawful colors of Fireworld have been replaced with some delightfully fruity pastels. Also, being submerged has transformed our hero into a naked gray man, which may or may not be better depending on your preference. Also of note is that you don't go into sub-chambers to grab items, they're right there for you to walk over. There's an awkward item bag that you walk into in every room to manage your stuff. The number of rooms is quite small, but they're helpfully ordered by Roman numerals. There are also only 3 trials that I know of, and in general the game seems unfinished. But, the trials can't be beat by anything in the previous games.

Damn right, you have to swim downward past a group of ass-kicking jellyfish that bounce you off the walls. Or, bypass evil fish in :gasp: a side-scrolling area, kind of. And last but not least, that damn 'hop up the platforms' trial is back, although there are less cheap falls and you have more control. I should also mention that the groupings of sound that play during the game almost resemble music this time.

As mentioned, Waterworld was distributed in very limited quantities, and when even that small amount couldn't get off the shelves, the only thing shelved after that was the incomplete SwordQuest series. I've heard of fairly recent attempts to create a final chapter in the series, but with no definitive results. The SwordQuest games as they are were a bit baffling, but at least they were an original step away from what most other people were doing at the time. We'll never know what would have happened if Atari would have done things differently and the SwordQuest trilogy had gotten its fourth game, nor we will ever know how the comic book story ended. But I know my readers look to me for closure, so this is the best you're gonna get as far as resolution is concerned:

The Airworld guardian killed the whole damn lot of 'em. THE END.

UPDATE: Retro Reader Sapphire has brought a swanky SwordQuest archive site to my attention, where among other things, you can read the original SQ comic books. Whether or not you'll want to thank Sapphire after getting through them is entirely subjective, but I'm glad I got to relive them ... I think.

Return to the main page