Swordquest: Earthworld

About Swordquest: Earthworld

Swordquest: Earthworld (1982) is the first of Atari's Swordquest games for the Atari 2600, an action-adventure packaged with a DC comic hiding clues to a contest for $150,000 of jewelled treasure, cut short by the 1983 crash.

Swordquest: Earthworld in Depth

Each Swordquest game was themed on a classical element, and Earthworld's rooms follow the Western zodiac. The player moves through a maze of rooms, carrying objects from one and placing them in others, and passing between rooms sometimes requires a "twitch"-style minigame. Placing an item in the right room reveals numbers pointing to a page and panel of the packaged comic, where a hidden word can be found; submitting the right words in the right order to Atari entered players into the next phase of the contest. The game indicated more clues than were needed, and a second clue in the manual, pointing to prime-numbered pages, showed which to send in. With Fireworld, themed on the Kabbalah tree of life, and Waterworld, on the chakras, the series was among the first attempts to combine adventure-game logic with action, alongside Atari's Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The story follows the twins Tarra and Torr, whose parents were killed by King Tyrannus's guards after his wizard Konjuro prophesied that the twins would slay the king. Raised by thieves, they give themselves away while plundering Konjuro's sea keep and are told of the "Sword of Ultimate Sorcery" and the "Talisman of Penultimate Truth" before being transported to Earthworld, where they fight beasts of the zodiac and the thief Herminus.

Making Swordquest: Earthworld

Atari, then owned by Warner Communications, used two Warner subsidiaries for the project: DC Comics made the comics and the Franklin Mint crafted the prizes, each worth about $25,000, with a $50,000 "Sword of Ultimate Sorcery" for a final contest between the four winners. Tod Frye programmed the games, and in-house illustrator Warren Chang painted the box covers. For Earthworld, about 5,000 entries were received but only eight were correct, and Bell won the Talisman at Atari's Sunnyvale headquarters in May 1983. After the crash and a change of CEO, Atari cancelled the project; the Fireworld contest was held in January 1984, Waterworld was restricted to Atari Club members, and Airworld was never released, so Bell and Fireworld winner Michael Rideout each received $15,000 and an Atari 7800 instead of a final. The fate of the remaining prizes became an urban legend. The Space Gamer said the only reason to buy Earthworld was to try to win the prize, and Digital Eclipse completed the series with a new Airworld in Atari 50 in 2022.