Speaker 1: It's the nineteen eighties, and parents in news media are
Speaker 1: seeing the devil in everything. Ritual animal killings, subliminal messages
Speaker 1: and heavy metal songs, demonic imagery in the Smurfs, which
Speaker 1: some religious fundamentalists have dubbed undead creatures because they were
Speaker 1: blue and some were corpses. Some even believe Pamper's diapers
Speaker 1: are the work of the devil. Because the Procter and
Speaker 1: Gamble logo has an astrological design. It's a kind of
Speaker 1: mass hyst area that comes to be known as Satanic panic.
Speaker 1: Most of it, virtually all of it, is total nonsense.
Speaker 1: But in May nineteen eighty three, in the bowels of
Speaker 1: a building in California, a group of people really are
Speaker 1: gathered around a giant Zodiac sign on the floor. If
Speaker 1: you're one of the people concerned about Satan taking over
Speaker 1: the world, this is one very weird scene. In the
Speaker 1: middle of it as a thirty year old named Jackie Custer.
Speaker 1: She's a new mom and a room full of strangers
Speaker 1: where there will be a kind of ritual involved, a
Speaker 1: ritual she's been participating in over and over again for months.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a night owl, and I know that I
Speaker 2: would put my son down to bed before eight o'clock.
Speaker 2: You know, he was usually asleep, and as a toddler,
Speaker 2: he kept pushing that bedtime up. But I would start
Speaker 2: and many times Dana would come home from work really
Speaker 2: really late, and I'd still be sitting there doing it,
Speaker 2: and he'd say, what are you doing. You know, you
Speaker 2: got to get up with the baby. And I would
Speaker 2: get into it, and I'd sort of lose track of
Speaker 2: time and where I was and just kept going on it.
Speaker 2: I would say, hm, oh, it had to have been
Speaker 2: close to one hundred hours or more.
Speaker 1: This ritual consumed Jackie's free time. But Jackie didn't have
Speaker 1: to pledge her soul to the devil, nor is she
Speaker 1: here in California to sacrifice her baby. All she has
Speaker 1: to do is be better and faster than the six
Speaker 1: other people in the room. Six others, all of whom
Speaker 1: have practiced the same thing for most of the past year.
Speaker 1: One is a member of the Coast Guard, another a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid. They're all gathered at the headquarters
Speaker 1: of Atari, the world's leading manufacturer of video games, and
Speaker 1: while they didn't realize that at the time, they were
Speaker 1: about to make video gaming history, for the first time
Speaker 1: a home video game could pay off with a real,
Speaker 1: tangible reward, a prize that held enough value to pay
Speaker 1: for college, or a new car, or a lot of
Speaker 1: demonic pampers diapers. One of these people is going to
Speaker 1: leave with a gold talisman worth twenty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but they won't be able to hang on to it
Speaker 1: for long. For iHeartRadio, this is the Legend of sword Quest.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and this is episode two. Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: start your joysticks. In nineteen eighty two, a Atari launched
Speaker 1: sword Quest, a contest that featured four games, four prizes,
Speaker 1: and a chance for the winners to meet up again
Speaker 1: to vie for the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery, a jewel
Speaker 1: studied blade valued at fifty thousand dollars. Here's how the
Speaker 1: first game Earth World worked. Your character explored twelve different
Speaker 1: rooms that contained sixteen different objects. You had the option
Speaker 1: of bringing the objects to different rooms. If you did
Speaker 1: and it was a fit, you got a number that
Speaker 1: corresponded to a page and panel in the included DC
Speaker 1: comic book. The comic was hiding word clues. Put five
Speaker 1: clues together and in the right sequence, and you cracked
Speaker 1: the game. But there was one problem. None of this
Speaker 1: was explained to players.
Speaker 3: There was no clues or hints anywhere in an instruction
Speaker 3: manual or anywhere to explain what items go where. It
Speaker 3: was literally trial and error, as I required one object
Speaker 3: in one room, or two in this one, three in
Speaker 3: this one, and I think you had like sixteen objects
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 1: That's Bert Wardahl. We met him in episode one. At
Speaker 1: the time, he was thirteen years old and eager to
Speaker 1: have a gold talisman worth twenty five thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: his nightstand. But Atari wasn't making it easy. In fact,
Speaker 1: the game was so hard it drove people to the brink.
Speaker 3: The amount of combinations you could use are probably in
Speaker 3: the millions or billions, and I just remember being very
Speaker 3: frustrated by it because I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: I did find one of the clues haphazardly, I don't
Speaker 3: know what I did to generate it.
Speaker 1: It was like being told to win at chess, but
Speaker 1: not telling you how each piece moved. The best advice
Speaker 1: Atari gave in the Owner's Manual was to keep a
Speaker 1: pen and paper handy because you'd be doing a lot
Speaker 1: of exploration. When it came to trying to solve the
Speaker 1: puzzles Bert played, he played a lot. He wandered in
Speaker 1: and out of rooms on this controlling a character that
Speaker 1: was little more than a pair of legs and a torso.
Speaker 1: This was the first Golden Age of gaming, but not
Speaker 1: the Golden age of graphics. This was Theater of the
Speaker 1: Mind stuff, an adventure that unfolded in your head and
Speaker 1: was fueled by the packaging art which made it look
Speaker 1: like a grand fantasy epic, and the included comic book,
Speaker 1: which dramatized the whole affair. Twins Tour and Tara are
Speaker 1: on a mission of revenge against King Tyrannus, who killed
Speaker 1: their parents. To defeat him, they'll have to conquer a
Speaker 1: series of quests. At least that's what a wise spirit
Speaker 1: tells them in the DC comics, written by Jerry Conway
Speaker 1: and Roy Thomas and illustrated by the late George Perez.
Speaker 4: To achieve your goal, you must be willing to learn
Speaker 4: what each world can teach you. You must have open minds
Speaker 4: and yes, open hearts as well. You must put aside
Speaker 4: your anger and your hate. You must learn to think
Speaker 4: before acting. You must learn to judge before responding Descend
Speaker 4: and you will enter the first of the four worlds.
Speaker 4: You must conquer Earth World.
Speaker 1: But Bert was, after all, thirteen years old. He wasn't
Speaker 1: about to conquer anything, and he was getting slightly angry
Speaker 1: at the game, which didn't have all the typical villains,
Speaker 1: the aliens, the monsters. He was essentially playing against himself,
Speaker 1: wandering around chambers with a zodiac theme.
Speaker 3: Honestly, you know, the first week that I had that game,
Speaker 3: I probably played it every day, tried to figure it out,
Speaker 3: and nothing ever worked. I got to the point where
Speaker 3: I couldn't find anything more in the game. There was
Speaker 3: no hints or anything to help you. There was no
Speaker 3: Internet you could look on for help. There was no
Speaker 3: Atari eight hundred number you could call for help. It
Speaker 3: was just you trying to figure this out. And I
Speaker 3: remember trying to look through the comic book on my own.
Speaker 1: Bert wasn't the only one having trouble in Ourlita calif
Speaker 1: Jackie Custer was equally befuddled by the chambers and their clues,
Speaker 1: but she didn't fit the typical profile of a gamer,
Speaker 1: at least not at the time. Jackie was an adult
Speaker 1: married to Dana Custer and had a lot going on
Speaker 1: in her life. Back surgery for some ruptured discs had
Speaker 1: put her out of commission, but she still had to
Speaker 1: tend to their new baby. Earthworld was a welcome distraction
Speaker 1: of sorts. Even though she had initially bought the Atari
Speaker 1: system for her husband, she wound up playing it a lot,
Speaker 1: and she loved the idea of sword Quest almost as
Speaker 1: much as Bert hated it.
Speaker 2: I kind of think I just ran into it, kind
Speaker 2: of as an accident. We didn't subscribe to the Atari
Speaker 2: magazine at the time, so I'm not sure how I
Speaker 2: found out about it, but got the game and brought
Speaker 2: it home and was fascinated by the fact that it
Speaker 2: was an action adventure, that there was actually something to
Speaker 2: figure out, and there's no instructions with the game whatsoever.
Speaker 2: You know, you took it out of the box and
Speaker 2: there was the comic book and the cassette and no
Speaker 2: directions on you know, you go this way or that way,
Speaker 2: or do this, do that, nothing, So you really had
Speaker 2: to start from the very beginning to try to figure
Speaker 2: it out yourself.
Speaker 1: It was also kind of a bonding experience with Dana.
Speaker 1: Jackie was good at solving puzzles, but not so good
Speaker 1: using the joystick.
Speaker 2: We worked as a team when he was home. He
Speaker 2: was really good with joysticks and I was not. You know,
Speaker 2: it was all thumbs and I had a really hard
Speaker 2: time getting through the little games within the game. He
Speaker 2: would take and control it for me and get me
Speaker 2: into the rooms and I would keep copious notes and
Speaker 2: write everything down and try to follow along and find
Speaker 2: the clues, and together as a team, we worked on
Speaker 2: this oh night after night. It was like instead of
Speaker 2: watching TV, we just get out the game and start
Speaker 2: working on it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this went on all day and into the night,
Speaker 1: Dana coming home from work and seeing Jackie still at it,
Speaker 1: still hoping to vanquish King Tyrannus. Finally Jackie realized what
Speaker 1: the game was doing.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while, the screen would go into
Speaker 2: these bright colors, and these clues would show up two numbers,
Speaker 2: and the comic book had beautiful pictures. But after I
Speaker 2: looked at it a few times, I noticed that there
Speaker 2: was words hidden in the pictures, and so I figured
Speaker 2: that it had to do with trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what the answer was. So I just started writing down
Speaker 2: those numbers, and eventually I figured out that it must
Speaker 2: stand for where it's at in the book. And so
Speaker 2: I've found that a gourd hidden on one of the pages.
Speaker 2: And then by looking at that page number, I noticed
Speaker 2: that one of the clues was that number. So it
Speaker 2: just hit me that that's the page number. And then
Speaker 2: the second number was the panel the panel on the
Speaker 2: comic book.
Speaker 1: This went on for months. Finally Jackie looked down at
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. There were ten word clues total,
Speaker 1: but only five of them were correct. To know which five,
Speaker 1: you had to have noticed that a poem appeared on
Speaker 1: the first page of the.
Speaker 5: Comic Conquesting with Old Siblings, Twain Prime Thieves of Ravaged Earth,
Speaker 5: Next journey to the fire World, Land of Volcanoes, Birth
Speaker 5: Waves without number, Water's realm, but where if Evil's there?
Speaker 5: Last read the Heir's winds Heaven High to claim a
Speaker 5: prize most rare.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it wasn't keats, but it was important. The
Speaker 1: poem was printed in all brown ink except for two words,
Speaker 1: which were in purple. Those words were prime and number.
Speaker 1: Only the clues on prime number pages and panels were accurate.
Speaker 1: The five words were talisman, tower quest found and in
Speaker 1: tower found in Quest Talisman. No, that didn't seem right.
Speaker 2: It was just process of elimination, hours and hours and
Speaker 2: hours of doing this and keeping notes, and then eventually
Speaker 2: I got to the point where I had all the clues,
Speaker 2: had all these panels laid out, and put the words together,
Speaker 2: and it came out to say, Creston Tower Talsman found.
Speaker 1: After hundreds of hours of playing, Jackie sent in her
Speaker 1: submission form that had been included in the game. She
Speaker 1: managed to finish it ahead of the contest deadline March fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three. Back in Wisconsin, Bert wasn't having as
Speaker 1: much luck. The clues were too elusive.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a smart guy. I spent probably more
Speaker 3: time than anybody, at least around my area, and I
Speaker 3: was trying to use logic to figure these things out.
Speaker 3: I was scouring that comic book and I just couldn't
Speaker 3: do it. There was nothing that helped. It was very
Speaker 3: frustrating to me because usually if I put my mind
Speaker 3: to something, I can figure it out, but this one
Speaker 3: eluded me. I got tired of it.
Speaker 1: So Bert finally set Earth World aside. He wouldn't be
Speaker 1: going to Sunnyvale. The vast majority of players who didn't
Speaker 1: have the time or patience wouldn't be going either. Those
Speaker 1: that found an answer had no idea whether it was
Speaker 1: the right answer. The game didn't tell them. They had
Speaker 1: to learn the old fashioned way from the mail carrier.
Speaker 1: In the spring of nineteen eighty three, Jackie got a letter.
Speaker 1: When she opened it, she saw it was on Atari letterhead.
Speaker 2: When I got the paper, I remember the day that
Speaker 2: the letter arrived in the mail. I remember opening it,
Speaker 2: and when I've read the words that congratulations, you've been
Speaker 2: you know selected, I've lost it. It was unbelievable. When
Speaker 2: I told Dana, he couldn't believe it either. It was
Speaker 2: really a fun part of my life, a time when
Speaker 2: things were real simple and I had the time to
Speaker 2: do something like this.
Speaker 1: The phrase had been correct quest in Tower Talisman found
Speaker 1: was the answer Atari was looking for, although Jackie didn't
Speaker 1: know it just then. She was one of only eight
Speaker 1: people who submitted the correct answer. This was exciting, but
Speaker 1: Jackie had a couple of problems. For one, she had
Speaker 1: a baby. The baby itself was not the issue, but
Speaker 1: it's not so easy to just leave an infant to
Speaker 1: go attend a video game tournament. The second problem was
Speaker 1: that Jackie and Dana were a team. Dana was the muscle,
Speaker 1: sort of the joystick operator. Jackie was the brains of
Speaker 1: the operation. But she still felt like she and her
Speaker 1: husband were a pair like Frodo and Samwise or Bo
Speaker 1: and Luke Duke.
Speaker 2: And so when it came to filling out the application,
Speaker 2: I just sort of thought it was kind of like
Speaker 2: that we would be able to go up to Atari together.
Speaker 2: What I sort of thought is that we were a team.
Speaker 2: And I think I even filled out my name first
Speaker 2: and then put his next to it in parentheses or something,
Speaker 2: and wrote on there that we were a husband and wife.
Speaker 2: But when it came back the letter from Atari saying
Speaker 2: that I had been selected, I talked to them on
Speaker 2: the phone and they said that because my name was
Speaker 2: on there first, legally I had to be the one
Speaker 2: that came up and played the game.
Speaker 1: In a sports movie, this is the kind of moment
Speaker 1: where the hero in this case, heroin sprain's an ankle
Speaker 1: or gets a bad referee call. They're down ten points,
Speaker 1: but Jackie was undeterred.
Speaker 2: I go, my husband wants to be there while I'm
Speaker 2: playing the game and won't know what to do with
Speaker 2: the baby. So They said, well, do you have someone
Speaker 2: that can care for the baby while you're doing the contest?
Speaker 2: And I go, yeah, I'm my mom. So they paid
Speaker 2: for my husband, my mom, myself, and my son to
Speaker 2: I'll go.
Speaker 1: Although Jackie's husband could come, he wasn't allowed to play
Speaker 1: with her. The tournament was single player only. Jackie had
Speaker 1: been playing the video game equivalent of doubles tennis. Now
Speaker 1: she was being told her partner couldn't step foot on
Speaker 1: the court. This was like limping into a championship game
Speaker 1: with a broken ankle. Even worse, her competition would be
Speaker 1: the best of the best. It was time to find
Speaker 1: out who would be crowned the first Champion of sword Quest,
Speaker 1: but not everyone would show up. Jackie, her husband, and
Speaker 1: their baby arrived in Sunnyville on May one, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: the day before the tournament was scheduled. They drove directly
Speaker 1: to the hotel, which was fully paid for by Atari.
Speaker 1: There she got a chance to check out her competition
Speaker 1: for the very first time. One contestant was a lieutenant
Speaker 1: with the US Coast Guard. Two were freshmen from the
Speaker 1: University of New Orleans. One was just sixteen years old
Speaker 1: and had to be accompanied by his parents.
Speaker 6: Supposedly, there was only eight people at submitted all the
Speaker 6: right answers, and there were one of their stipulations what
Speaker 6: they were going to take up to fifty people, and
Speaker 6: for the first game, they only had eight submit the
Speaker 6: right answers. So off we all went, except for one
Speaker 6: person missed their flight. I don't know who was, and
Speaker 6: I kept thinking, you can get a chance for twenty.
Speaker 7: Five thousand dollars prize. I might have booked another flight.
Speaker 1: That's Stephen Bell. He was twenty years old and from
Speaker 1: Saint Clair Shores, a suburb of Detroit. At the time,
Speaker 1: he looked a bit like a roadie, long hair mustache.
Speaker 1: Stephen was one of the seven, and believe it or not,
Speaker 1: this is the first time he's talked publicly about sword
Speaker 1: Quest since the eighties.
Speaker 7: Yep, penty good first ever podcast I'm all school.
Speaker 1: Stephen had gotten the answer right, but it happened by accident.
Speaker 1: He didn't notice the clue hidden in the poem for.
Speaker 6: The first one, and at that time that I sent
Speaker 6: my answers in and I really didn't even know it
Speaker 6: was a phrase because I just wrote them down in
Speaker 6: the order I found him. The first game I think
Speaker 6: five words were quest n tower, talisman found. A couple
Speaker 6: of weeks later, I got a letter from him, and
Speaker 6: my father at the time was like, no way, Like
Speaker 6: here you go.
Speaker 7: I wanted trip to California.
Speaker 1: Jackie, meanwhile, was the only woman who had gotten the
Speaker 1: answer correct and in nineteen eighty three, this made her
Speaker 1: of great interest to everyone.
Speaker 2: Atari immediately said, well, we're really excited that you're the
Speaker 2: only female and all the stuff. At the time, it
Speaker 2: was a big thing, you know. I know, a couple
Speaker 2: of the guys that were there, the teenagers mostly were saying,
Speaker 2: like interested whether or not I could figure it out,
Speaker 2: or whether I knew what I was doing, and like
Speaker 2: I said, I was not good with joysticks.
Speaker 1: After meeting the competition, the contestants settled in for the night.
Speaker 1: The next day they congregated at Atari's headquarters. Jackie looked around.
Speaker 1: In the tournament room was a large zodiac sign and
Speaker 1: seven television sets on rolling carts like the kind you
Speaker 1: used to see in school. Each set had two folding chairs,
Speaker 1: one for the player, one for a judge. Then Jackie
Speaker 1: saw the prize that was up for grabs.
Speaker 2: The talisman. It was very pretty. It wasn't exactly completely round.
Speaker 2: It had kind of like scaloped edge to it, if
Speaker 2: I remember right. So it was twelve pieces of the pie,
Speaker 2: and at the head of each one they had the
Speaker 2: zodiac symbol, all done in stones, rare stones, and I
Speaker 2: think they used them birth stones, Aukland marines and topaths
Speaker 2: and garnets and that sort of thing, and then diamonds
Speaker 2: and rubies and pearls. But it was very beautiful, and
Speaker 2: I think it had a combination of white and yellow gold.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was all one or the other.
Speaker 1: The talisman was eighteen carrots, solid gold, finished with diamonds
Speaker 1: and other precious stones. Atari wisely kept a security guard nearby.
Speaker 1: He was with Pinkerton, the private security and detective agency
Speaker 1: that had been around since the eighteen hundreds. To Jackie
Speaker 1: and the rest of the players, everything seemed pretty well organized.
Speaker 1: They had flown in on time, had hotel accommodations, and
Speaker 1: the zodiac sign was a nice touch. But behind the
Speaker 1: scenes Atari was working on the fly Earth World was
Speaker 1: not really a game with a beginning, middle, and end.
Speaker 1: It was a game of strategy and curiosity, and it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to dawn on anyone in marketing that holding
Speaker 1: a tournament with that kind of game was going to
Speaker 1: be difficult. With just days Togo before the contest, an
Speaker 1: Atari employee started writing up rules. Earth World would have
Speaker 1: to be a timed competition. The first person to reach
Speaker 1: the eleventh level of the game by finding and placing
Speaker 1: objects in the correct place would be declared the winner.
Speaker 1: There would be a ninety minute time limit because Atari
Speaker 1: had planned a catered lunch and needed to wrap the
Speaker 1: contest up by noon. To help speed things along, a
Speaker 1: special version of the game had to be prepared by
Speaker 1: Dan Higgins, who wrote the original program, and John Michael Battaglia,
Speaker 1: who came up with fresh clues. It was different enough
Speaker 1: from the commercial release so that players wouldn't just be
Speaker 1: able to mimic their own movements. They'd have to figure
Speaker 1: things out in the moment, kind of like Atari's marketing team.
Speaker 1: Finally everyone was ready. Jackie took her seat and a
Speaker 1: judge sat beside her. The televisions began to be fired up.
Speaker 1: Each TV had its own Atari console with Earthworld plugged in.
Speaker 1: Those two were turned on. The rules were explained. Reached
Speaker 1: the eleventh level, when the talisman a lot of Sleepless
Speaker 1: Nights had come to this. It was time with seven
Speaker 1: judges watching seven players. An Atari employee gave the signal,
Speaker 1: and yes, he really said this.
Speaker 3: Lady, gentlemen, start your joy say.
Speaker 1: Like a race. All seven players hit start and began
Speaker 1: playing across the screens. Tiny characters began darting in and
Speaker 1: out of chambers. Each room had four possible exits. You'd
Speaker 1: have to try them to see where they led.
Speaker 2: I sort of felt kind of funny while I was
Speaker 2: playing the game. I was very nervous too, so it
Speaker 2: made it even worse. And when I couldn't get through
Speaker 2: to a room or whatever, I sort of turn around
Speaker 2: and look at him and kind of give him a
Speaker 2: look like, well, you know, I'm doing the best I can.
Speaker 2: It was just fun. I knew the answers, I could
Speaker 2: figure out the puzzle.
Speaker 1: Because the screens were facing away from each other, it
Speaker 1: wasn't easy to make out how the other players were doing,
Speaker 1: but when a level was completed, a noise could be heard.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon, the room began to fill up with the
Speaker 1: chimes one after another. But Jackie realized that she and
Speaker 1: Dana were really a team. Losing her partner was having
Speaker 1: a dramatic effect on her gameplay.
Speaker 2: It's too bad I wasn't better with joysticks because when
Speaker 2: we were playing the playoff game, the one for the prize,
Speaker 2: I had a horrible time getting through the different rooms.
Speaker 2: And it would have been so much better if Ganna
Speaker 2: could have been there with me, playing the game with me,
Speaker 2: but it didn't work out that way.
Speaker 1: Near Jackie, with Stephen Bell and another player, Matt Belasa,
Speaker 1: a twenty one year old chemistry major from Michigan, they
Speaker 1: began to pull away from the pack. Playing neck and neck.
Speaker 1: Stephen and Matt were in a two person race, but Matt,
Speaker 1: like most of the players, began having trouble with the
Speaker 1: fourth level. That left Stephen and another player, Stephen Dousa,
Speaker 1: to pull ahead. One would complete a level, then the
Speaker 1: other would catch up.
Speaker 6: Well, it was kind of funny because I'm sitting there
Speaker 6: reading these clues and all sudden they hear some of
Speaker 6: the other contestants tevs and making a little NOOYI like
Speaker 6: they had already got the first one.
Speaker 7: I'm like five minuter start going, so here we go.
Speaker 6: And then every time somebody would solve another level, you
Speaker 6: would hear it, and by the like the fifth or
Speaker 6: sixth one on me and Steve and Duster were pulled
Speaker 6: on the way, and every time we got when we
Speaker 6: could feel it one else's I is honest, like you
Speaker 6: son of it.
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes, in thirty minutes and then thirty five Stephen
Speaker 1: Bell got the lead. But then Stephen Dusa caught up
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 6: You get heard the noises, but he didn't know exactly
Speaker 6: where it was coming from. So so I don't know
Speaker 6: how how far exactly somebody else says, But you know,
Speaker 6: then when they got on the last one that I
Speaker 6: get the next one, I'm in And that's when I
Speaker 6: finally got like a little bit nervous, like man, I
Speaker 6: could actually winness thing.
Speaker 1: At exactly forty six minutes and forty nine point four seconds,
Speaker 1: one of the judges stood up and gave a signal
Speaker 1: there was a winner, and it was Stephen Bell who
Speaker 1: felt a tap on his shoulder.
Speaker 7: The judges were amazed on that.
Speaker 6: You know, we solved all their riddles and can figure
Speaker 6: it out in under an hour. In the contest, the game,
Speaker 6: you had to get to the eleventh level the way.
Speaker 6: After I got done with ten, I'm like, I only
Speaker 6: got one to go and then sure enough I did
Speaker 6: the right thing and screen popped up with eleven and
Speaker 6: the music, and the guy behind me said, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 6: we have a winner.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, he's obviously he's talking about to meet.
Speaker 7: That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Out of a half million people, he was the only
Speaker 1: one to complete the quest. The talisman was his, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be his for very long. At the time
Speaker 1: he won Earth World, Stephen was twenty, out of work
Speaker 1: and a little cash strapped. The win couldn't have come
Speaker 1: at a better time. When he started playing the game,
Speaker 1: he couldn't find a job. The game became his job.
Speaker 6: From nineteen eighty to mid eighty two, there was nothing.
Speaker 6: You couldn't go to McDonald's and get a job, so
Speaker 6: I was doing a lot of nothing, probably all Shortly
Speaker 6: after I got the game, I actually got my first job.
Speaker 6: And these games they gave you nine months to solve it.
Speaker 6: In that time, yeah, I ended up getting a job finally.
Speaker 1: He had been playing Atari for a few years. Earth
Speaker 1: World was being promoted through the Atari fan club, where
Speaker 1: Stephen first caught mention of it. A twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars prize to play a game he was playing for
Speaker 1: free already.
Speaker 6: Her parents just one day asked us if we want
Speaker 6: to go buy other thing? Sure or me and my
Speaker 6: few sisters. So we brought the thing home and we
Speaker 6: go from there. Started with Pong and Space Invaders. One
Speaker 6: of the games had a information about a little Atari
Speaker 6: Club magazine, so I joined that and so then this
Speaker 6: way I get information on all the newest games coming out,
Speaker 6: and that's how I found out about the Sword Press
Speaker 6: games coming out.
Speaker 1: At first, he had found Earthworld as perplexing as everyone else.
Speaker 1: The game didn't seem to adhere to any of the
Speaker 1: normal rules. He wandered from chamber to chamber, but eventually
Speaker 1: realized that searching for clues on screen was more work
Speaker 1: than the contest required.
Speaker 6: All the contest was really in the comic book. The
Speaker 6: gameplay it was supposed to be kind of coinciding with
Speaker 6: the book, where you would play the game and get
Speaker 6: a clue, and then go back to the comic book
Speaker 6: and find your clue. Well, it didn't take me too
Speaker 6: long to find out that the whole contest was basically
Speaker 6: reading the comic book and finding the clues. So he
Speaker 6: just played the game because it was kind of fun,
Speaker 6: but to actually go through the entire game was impossible.
Speaker 6: Solving that first game it was almost like a lot
Speaker 6: of reads. There was no way they even admitted that
Speaker 6: kind of ran shorter time and had to get it out,
Speaker 6: Get it out, get it out.
Speaker 1: Steven scanned the panels searching for hidden words. Some were
Speaker 1: written on walls, some backwards, some in speech bubbles. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he grabbed a dictionary to discover their meaning. I mean,
Speaker 1: what is a talisman anyway? But he got all five
Speaker 1: of them and in the right order quest in talisman
Speaker 1: tower found like Jackie, He sent in his submission form
Speaker 1: and waited. Then Stephen flew out, met everyone eight and
Speaker 1: experienced his first earthquake.
Speaker 6: I decided, I'm going to wash my hair ealthquake, Neil,
Speaker 6: Now stick your head under the faucet, because you know
Speaker 6: you're all limber when you're twenty years old.
Speaker 7: And I remember when I went to do that, I
Speaker 7: almost fell into the tub. I'm like, what the heck's
Speaker 7: going on?
Speaker 6: So I washed my hair going down the middle lobbry and
Speaker 6: one of the other contestants was a woman from la
Speaker 6: and she says, did you feel at earthquake?
Speaker 7: Is that what that was? Thing? Got I I thought
Speaker 7: I was losing it.
Speaker 1: The earthquake was minor and the contest was uninterrupted. When
Speaker 1: Stephen won, an Atari employee walked over and, with camera
Speaker 1: bulbs flashing, handed him the talisman. Then everyone was invited
Speaker 1: out to a celebratory luncheon, well not exactly out. After
Speaker 1: the contest, Atari employees cleared the televisions and game systems
Speaker 1: and dragged in a bunch of folding tables. Like the
Speaker 1: Knights of the Round Table, Harry, players ate and swapped
Speaker 1: stories and strategies.
Speaker 6: Jackie had come up to me and she said, you know,
Speaker 6: when I seen you walk into the lobby yesterday, I
Speaker 6: told myself that's the winner with you know, she didn't
Speaker 6: tell me that at the time. I'm like, you had
Speaker 6: such confidence in me. I had no idea what I had,
Speaker 6: no idea what we're even doing.
Speaker 1: They all flew out the next day, but for Steven,
Speaker 1: the trip home was a little more complicated. He had
Speaker 1: come to Sunnyvale with a few changes of clothing. He
Speaker 1: was coming home with a medallion worth twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and one small enough to steal or worse lose somewhere.
Speaker 7: That was the other interesting thing.
Speaker 6: When I won, they handed it to me and said
Speaker 6: here your congratulations, and I took it home on the plane.
Speaker 6: And after I had won, one of the little writers
Speaker 6: for their little magazine interviewed me. He asked me, you know,
Speaker 6: are you going to be worried that you're having this thing?
Speaker 6: I said, no, nobody's going to know what the hell
Speaker 6: it is, and I ain't gonna tell them. Everyone's home
Speaker 6: and I walk in and I just put it on
Speaker 6: a kitchen table and went May cameer. I opened it
Speaker 6: up and say what do you think? And I'm like,
Speaker 6: what's that? My sister actually said it was that a replica?
Speaker 6: I said, no, I want it. I won't and then
Speaker 6: of course they were, oh my god, he want you,
Speaker 6: and I could believe it.
Speaker 7: He had took some mom. You know, she starts crying.
Speaker 6: You know, there wasn't too much work at the time,
Speaker 6: and I just got this, you know, three dollars and
Speaker 6: thirty five cent an hour minimum wage job, and next thing,
Speaker 6: you know, I got picking twenty five thousand dollars prize.
Speaker 7: So that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: This was incredibly cool. Months of gaming had earned him
Speaker 1: a tangible prize worth real cash. But Stephen earned something
Speaker 1: else too. Stephen had bested Earthworld that earned him an
Speaker 1: automatic spot in the finals. He now had a one
Speaker 1: in four chance of winning the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery.
Speaker 1: For now, the talisman went directly to a safe deposit box.
Speaker 1: Stephen was taking no chances. His mother, who was an
Speaker 1: insurance agent, also wanted to get it appraised for insurance purposes.
Speaker 6: When I got it appraised, there is a jewelry store
Speaker 6: in the area, and we told him what it was,
Speaker 6: and my mom wanted to have it appraised for the
Speaker 6: insurance purposes. And you know, this thing was, you know,
Speaker 6: six inches diameter and three quarters thick. And we handed.
Speaker 7: The guy and he says, well, what's this made out of?
Speaker 8: Him?
Speaker 6: He said, that's solid gold, And he says, no, it's not.
Speaker 6: He says, this, it doesn't look right if I got
Speaker 6: a brass base. And my brain immediately went to I
Speaker 6: hope so, because it'd be a hell of a lawsuit.
Speaker 6: So my dad and I are standing there and and
Speaker 6: the guys, I'll take it in the back, and I
Speaker 6: guess what they do is they do this a little
Speaker 6: chemical test on it.
Speaker 7: It was so funny because we're standing there.
Speaker 6: In just about a minute or so later, some girl
Speaker 6: come out from the back room and her eyes looked like,
Speaker 6: you know, giant saucers, like, oh my god, what.
Speaker 7: Do we get here?
Speaker 6: And then that guy comes back says, I'll be damned,
Speaker 6: this is solid gold.
Speaker 1: Steven kept the talisman for a few months. Sometimes he'd
Speaker 1: take it out of the safety deposit box when a
Speaker 1: kid from the neighborhood wanted to see it. But keeping
Speaker 1: it indefinitely carried with it a complication. Remember when Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey gave every member of her audience a new car.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal, and it was an even
Speaker 1: bigger deal when every single one of those audience members
Speaker 1: realized they had to pay income tax on their cars
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of dollars. Well, that's how contest prizes work.
Speaker 1: They're taxable. And Steven didn't have a few thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to spare.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Unfortunately, I was only in possession of it until
Speaker 6: the following September, and I had to sell it. And
Speaker 6: I've read on the internet that a lot of people
Speaker 6: thought I sold it to go to school, and that
Speaker 6: was not the case. I had to sell it to
Speaker 6: pay the taxes on it. My family was comfortable but
Speaker 6: we didn't have extra money, so we did not have
Speaker 6: twenty five hundred dollars to give the Dirs unfortunately.
Speaker 1: But where do you sell in a Tory medallion?
Speaker 6: I took it to a local coin dealer and just
Speaker 6: to show them, well, the value was supposedly twenty five thousand,
Speaker 6: and he offered me like fourteen thousand.
Speaker 7: I'm like what, there's no way, so I left.
Speaker 6: Then I go to another one and his offer was
Speaker 6: slightly higher. But then my dad says, well, here's what
Speaker 6: they did. As as you showed that thing to that guy,
Speaker 6: he made a phone call in the entire area. Probably
Speaker 6: had like a limit they were going to set and
Speaker 6: what they're going to pay for this thing. The only
Speaker 6: other way I could have got more money was to
Speaker 6: literally hold onto it and advertise it and maybe some
Speaker 6: guy who wanted it for a collection of some kind.
Speaker 7: But once again I didn't have any time. I had
Speaker 7: to pay taxes on it, so.
Speaker 1: Even though it had a declared value of twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, that wasn't necessarily the street value of it.
Speaker 6: I ended up selling it for fourteen eight hundred. But
Speaker 6: if you look at it, there's a small sword that
Speaker 6: was on it. Yeah, I kept that part. He offered
Speaker 6: me fifteen to six, and I said, well, I want
Speaker 6: to keep the little sword in this sense.
Speaker 7: Okay, that's about eight hundred.
Speaker 1: The sword stayed on his nightstand. Then a little while
Speaker 1: later it disappeared.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately, about a year or so later the little
Speaker 6: sword that I just always kept on my dresser.
Speaker 1: Apristole all told Stephen had about fifteen thousand dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: and he knew exactly what he wanted to do with
Speaker 1: the money. The Pontiac Fierro was a new model, two
Speaker 1: door sports car that was fuel efficient. Pontiac hired halland
Speaker 1: Oates to endorse it. If you went to a Hall
Speaker 1: and Oats concert in nineteen eighty four, you'd see lots
Speaker 1: of fierro ads and maybe a few display models. This
Speaker 1: was what Stephen wanted, a sporty commuter car. Hey, he
Speaker 1: lived in Detroit. Cars were a big deal.
Speaker 6: I bought a nineteen eighty four Fiero and that was
Speaker 6: a disaster. The engine only lasted about thirty months, and
Speaker 6: then of course they gave you another one that was defective.
Speaker 6: So unfortunately, four years later I had no car and
Speaker 6: nothing to show for either After making all the payments
Speaker 6: on it.
Speaker 1: The Fierrero retailed for about ten thousand dollars, so Stephen
Speaker 1: didn't spend every cent on it, but a lot of it.
Speaker 1: The rest went to other bills. But he didn't mind
Speaker 1: that so much. There was still lots of contests to go,
Speaker 1: more sword Quest worlds to be conquered. He began playing Fireworld,
Speaker 1: the second in the series. He could, in theory, compete
Speaker 1: in all four games and win each one. For Stephen,
Speaker 1: Fireworld would be a chance to become a two time champion.
Speaker 1: For Jackie, it would be a chance at redemption. For
Speaker 1: others it would be a chance to get their foot
Speaker 1: in the contest and get their hands on the second prize,
Speaker 1: the Chalice. But Fireworld created a problem that Atari didn't
Speaker 1: quite know how to deal with. Unlike earth World, which
Speaker 1: was almost impossible to solve, Fireworld allowed players to share
Speaker 1: a strategy to network.
Speaker 2: But some of these people would get on the phone
Speaker 2: and they would beg you and push you and push
Speaker 2: you and try to get you to break it down
Speaker 2: to where you would tell them the answer how you
Speaker 2: came up with it. So many people won the second one,
Speaker 2: and I think that some of the other guys that
Speaker 2: were finalists for Earth World. I think some of them
Speaker 2: gave out secrets, you know, kind of let their friends
Speaker 2: in on it.
Speaker 1: A community around sword Quest was forming. Ataria's second lap
Speaker 1: of the contest wouldn't have seven finalists, it would have
Speaker 1: over seventy, and they would push Atari to its breaking point.
Speaker 1: That's next time on a Legend of sword Quest.
Speaker 8: The Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart
Speaker 8: Podcasts and School of Humans. This episode was written by
Speaker 8: Jake Rosson and hosted by Jamie Loftus producers are Miranda
Speaker 8: Hawkins and Josh Fischer. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
Speaker 8: Brandon Barr, and Jason English. Our show editor is Mary Doo.
Speaker 8: Audio engineering by Graham Gibson, Research and fact checking by
Speaker 8: Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 8: This episode was sound designed by Josh Fisher, mixing and
Speaker 8: mastering by Jake Cook. Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Voices
Speaker 8: in this episode are provided by Miranda Hawkins and Graham Parker.