Speaker 1: In August nineteen eighty six, Stephen Bell decides to check
Speaker 1: his mailbox. He walks over, opens it and begins sorting
Speaker 1: through pizzaflyers, bills and letters, junk, junk, and more junk.
Speaker 1: One envelope, though, catches his eye. It has a return
Speaker 1: address from Atari Holdings Incorporated, out of New York. Stephen
Speaker 1: thinks this is a little strange for one. Atari's headquarters
Speaker 1: are in Sunnyvale, California. That's where he'd become the first
Speaker 1: ever winner in their sword Quest contest. The prize for
Speaker 1: racing through the first game in record time was a
Speaker 1: talisman worth twenty five thousand dollars. He hadn't won the
Speaker 1: second game, but had kept busy trying to solve the
Speaker 1: third water World. The second strange thing was that he
Speaker 1: hadn't heard anything about the contest in the past two years.
Speaker 1: Nothing official anyway. Stephen opens the envelope, think, King, he's
Speaker 1: going to get word on whether he qualified for the
Speaker 1: water World contest, which has been delayed over and over again. Instead,
Speaker 1: the letter informs him of something else. It's not an invitation,
Speaker 1: but an offer. Here's Stephen, they.
Speaker 2: Just wanted to end it, and here's some money. They
Speaker 2: offered Mike and I fifteen thousand.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of settlement offer. Atari is canceling the contest,
Speaker 1: all of it, and they're offering Stephen and fellow winner
Speaker 1: Michael rideout fifteen thousand dollars to not compete, to give
Speaker 1: up any legal claim to having been denied a chance
Speaker 1: at winning the sword Quest contest and the Sword of
Speaker 1: Ultimate Sorcery, which is worth fifty thousand dollars. The talisman
Speaker 1: was already gone, having been sold by Stephen to buy
Speaker 1: a defective Pontiac Fieriro, a model that had the annoying
Speaker 1: habit of catching fire. Now he could take a guaranteed
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars or take a one in four chance
Speaker 1: of getting the fifty thousand dollars sword, and maybe even
Speaker 1: one or both of the other prizes, which are valued
Speaker 1: at twenty five thousand dollars each. This was like one
Speaker 1: of the puzzles in the game, objects constantly being shifted
Speaker 1: and sorted from room to room. Stephen stands outside his
Speaker 1: apartment on the outskirts of Detroit, a dwindling hub of
Speaker 1: jobs lost to a sagging American automotive market. The money
Speaker 1: was more than he'd make in a year, but the
Speaker 1: sword and its bejeweled handle is calling to him. Stephen
Speaker 1: isn't sure what to do, and then the letter mentions
Speaker 1: something else.
Speaker 2: The letter stated it had to be unanimous or they
Speaker 2: would actually continue the contest.
Speaker 1: Two sword Quest games had been played and there were
Speaker 1: two winners, Stephen and Michael, the winner of Firewars World.
Speaker 1: Both would have to agree in order to get the money.
Speaker 1: The problem. This was nineteen eighty six, and neither one
Speaker 1: had the other's phone number for iHeartRadio. This is the
Speaker 1: Legend of sword Quest. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus and
Speaker 1: this is episode four, Descent into Darkness. Water World, the
Speaker 1: third game in the sword Quest saga, was released in
Speaker 1: October nineteen eighty three. The winner was due the Crown
Speaker 1: of Life, a headpiece made of solid gold and adorned
Speaker 1: with diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. It came with a cash
Speaker 1: value of twenty five thousand dollars, assuming the victor would
Speaker 1: ever want to part with it. The in person contest
Speaker 1: for the crown was planned for nineteen eighty four, but
Speaker 1: early on there were signs that something was well off
Speaker 1: about the promotion. Unlike the other games in the sword
Speaker 1: Quest series. Water World War wasn't sold in stores. You
Speaker 1: couldn't just go into a J. C. Penny or Toys
Speaker 1: r Us and grab the game from a cashier with
Speaker 1: your hot little hands. You had to be a member
Speaker 1: of the Atari Age Fan Club and send away for
Speaker 1: the game. It was weird.
Speaker 3: I think at the time it never even occurred to me.
Speaker 3: We saw it in the newsletter and ended up again
Speaker 3: being able to get our hands on it, but we
Speaker 3: didn't really stop to think that it wasn't in the stores.
Speaker 3: At the time. We were living in a small town
Speaker 3: that I don't think there were any video game sales,
Speaker 3: like any stores that sold them, so at the time
Speaker 3: it meant going into the bigger town, which wasn't far away,
Speaker 3: mind you. But we didn't do it a lot, so
Speaker 3: I think we weren't keeping track of what was on
Speaker 3: the store shelves as well, especially once we realized we
Speaker 3: could mail order some of these things. So yeah, for
Speaker 3: water World, we ended up getting it through the game club.
Speaker 1: That's Russ Perry Junior. Back in nineteen eighty two, US
Speaker 1: was about fourteen years old, living in Illinois and a
Speaker 1: devout sword Quest player, A quester a sword head, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. He was obsessed with winning
Speaker 1: actual prizes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean there's always things like just
Speaker 3: you know, solving the game and having bragging rights, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: actually winning something like that, Oh yeah, that would have
Speaker 3: been awesome.
Speaker 1: When the first sword Quest game, Earth World came out,
Speaker 1: Russ and his brother grabbed it.
Speaker 3: We loved that game when these sort of seemed on
Speaker 3: the surface like they were going to be sort of
Speaker 3: a continuation of that. So yeah, we got the game
Speaker 3: as soon as we could, and then immediately started pressing
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: Russ tried to solve the first two games, but they
Speaker 1: were both difficult.
Speaker 3: So well, we didn't win the first one, Let's go
Speaker 3: see if we can do the second one. And the
Speaker 3: second one seemed like it was a little bit easier,
Speaker 3: but it was still as eech and we still couldn't
Speaker 3: find an obvious pattern. And I think we ended up
Speaker 3: finding like maybe six of the clues legitimately, but again
Speaker 3: it was mostly coming down to the comic book that
Speaker 3: we found the words in the comic books and were
Speaker 3: able to enter, and I think again we only got
Speaker 3: three or four or maybe we got all five, but
Speaker 3: the order was wrong or something. But so once again, yeah,
Speaker 3: we were just that close and didn't quite make it.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of gamers, Russ wasn't discouraged. Gaming
Speaker 1: is a hobby of getting your reps in, and so
Speaker 1: Russ dutifully sent in his thirty one dollars and ninety
Speaker 1: five cents for a copy of water World. Four to
Speaker 1: six weeks later, he got the game, and this time
Speaker 1: there was something of a surprise. The game was accompanied
Speaker 1: by a hint book, which guided players on strategies to
Speaker 1: find clues in the game. Water World was based on
Speaker 1: the chakra, the ancient spiritual theory of energy points in
Speaker 1: the body. Knowing how that was laid out would help
Speaker 1: you navigate the different rooms. Russ, however, was not versed
Speaker 1: in Hinduism or Buddhism, so he just kept his eyes
Speaker 1: glued to the screen and hoped for the best.
Speaker 3: It was definitely easier, and I don't remember if we
Speaker 3: ended up finding all the clues or just the majority
Speaker 3: of them, but it was clearly easier. We found more
Speaker 3: clues and it didn't take us as long. If I remember,
Speaker 3: the map was a little bit smaller too. I'm trying
Speaker 3: to remember that was based on was it And it
Speaker 3: was like eight rooms total, I guess, and I don't
Speaker 3: remember exactly how they were connected, if it was a
Speaker 3: ring or a grid. But it didn't seem as hard
Speaker 3: even I think some of the challenges that you have
Speaker 3: to go through in certain rooms, I don't think they
Speaker 3: were necessarily as hard.
Speaker 1: The comic was also of some help. Included in the package.
Speaker 1: It told the continuing story of Tor and Tara, the
Speaker 1: twins opposing King Tyrannus and searching for the objects that
Speaker 1: will help lead them to the sword that can bring
Speaker 1: Tyrannus down. In the third issue, they're forced to brave
Speaker 1: the open seas.
Speaker 4: He didn't come up. That means, even though it's cold
Speaker 4: enough up here to make icicles out of a dragon's breadth,
Speaker 4: I've got to go back after him. Wait, something ascending
Speaker 4: from below. No, oh god, he's dead dead.
Speaker 1: Actually, Tour's fine, he's fine. He found a mask that
Speaker 1: allows him to breathe underwater, and the twins are successful
Speaker 1: in capturing the crown, which brings them one step closer
Speaker 1: to the sword, just like the people playing the game. Finally,
Speaker 1: Russ thought he had the solution. He wrote it down,
Speaker 1: sent it in and waited. In May nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: he got a response, and it was good news. The
Speaker 1: solution he provided had been correct, but just as before,
Speaker 1: there were too many winners, way too many. For the
Speaker 1: last game, Atari had seventy three people with the right answer,
Speaker 1: but only wanted to have fifty playing in the finals.
Speaker 1: This time, the company needed to narrow it down even further,
Speaker 1: from forty five contestants to just ten, so they asked
Speaker 1: Russ to write an essay about why he liked the game.
Speaker 1: Russ did. He wrote it down, sent it in, and waited.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always that combination of excited, but oh god,
Speaker 3: there's more. You know, we might not make this, even
Speaker 3: though we did all the work and I got it
Speaker 3: right this time. I think in our heads we knew
Speaker 3: that it was it was a little bit easier than
Speaker 3: the other ones, so I think we kind of assumed
Speaker 3: there'd be more entrants that got it right. And again,
Speaker 3: I don't think we had figured out yet that it
Speaker 3: was only available to a smaller group of people.
Speaker 1: Russ kept waiting. He turned fifth, and then sixteen. He
Speaker 1: had gotten his learner's permit, and the time Atari was
Speaker 1: taking to address the contest his voice was getting deeper
Speaker 1: in the time Atari was taking to address the contest.
Speaker 1: Maybe Russ would get married and have children before Atari
Speaker 1: wrote him back about this contest.
Speaker 3: And it did seem like with water World, things got
Speaker 3: really quiet, and it was Earth's World and Fireworld. We
Speaker 3: knew we hadn't won, we weren't going to make the
Speaker 3: final playoff, but then when the playoffs occurred, there'd be
Speaker 3: coverage in Atari page and other things, so at least
Speaker 3: we got closure on those water World it did kind
Speaker 3: of feel like, well, there's no closure here.
Speaker 5: What happened?
Speaker 1: And then finally he got a response. It came in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. It was from Atari's marketing firm, Amern
Speaker 1: Marketing Associates, and it began, dear mister Perry, Atari was
Speaker 1: sold to new owners last summer. Russ must have gotten
Speaker 1: a kick out of that, mister Perry. It went on
Speaker 1: to say, a very conscientious and industrious attorney for Atari
Speaker 1: has the matter in hand now, and I wish there
Speaker 1: was more we could tell you. For us, it amounted
Speaker 1: to the same thing. The chances of a water World
Speaker 1: contest were looking grim when sword Quest began. Atari had
Speaker 1: been on top of the entertainment world. But in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four things had changed considerably. Sales had slowed, the
Speaker 1: stock of parent company Warner had dropped like a rock,
Speaker 1: and the company had gone from a Silicon Valley sensation
Speaker 1: too well something else.
Speaker 3: I kept up with the video game magazines as much
Speaker 3: as possible, and it was clear between some of the
Speaker 3: articles we were seeing and just the times you do
Speaker 3: get to the store, there's a lot more cartridges unclearance.
Speaker 3: You realized there's definitely something going on.
Speaker 1: Russ didn't know what that something was, but he was
Speaker 1: about to find out. In the summer of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the parent company of Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers Discovery, made
Speaker 1: headlines when they wound up shelving an entire movie, Batgirl,
Speaker 1: which was already done filming. They figured it saved them
Speaker 1: more to keep it tucked away than to distribute it.
Speaker 1: It's not often major movies with Michael Keaton and Brendan
Speaker 1: Fraser are just locked up, but Warner did it, and
Speaker 1: then they did it again in twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't the first time they had made a drastic
Speaker 1: move to please shareholders. In nineteen eighty four, it's safe
Speaker 1: to say Atari was no longer the star of Warner Communications.
Speaker 1: Instead of posting record profits, the company was losing tens
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars a quarter. Atari went from expecting
Speaker 1: to see revenue rise by fifty percent to seeing it
Speaker 1: expected to increase only ten to fifty teen percent. One
Speaker 1: of the bigger problems is that there were more systems available,
Speaker 1: like Kaliko Vision, which had gotten off to a slow
Speaker 1: start but exploded once Nintendo's arcade hit Donkey Kong arrived
Speaker 1: on the system. It was the killer app before there
Speaker 1: was such a term as killer app. Everyone loved Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong from playing it in the arcades, but if they
Speaker 1: wanted to play it at home, they had to buy
Speaker 1: a Kaliko Vision, which had an exclusive on the game.
Speaker 1: Early on.
Speaker 6: Kaliko Vision, I'll never forget I was sitting at a
Speaker 6: meeting at Atari when the first colcos hit the street.
Speaker 6: So they went out and bought one, and they walked
Speaker 6: into the conference room and they took it out of
Speaker 6: the box, and they opened it up and they looked
Speaker 6: at it, and the engineers looked at it and said,
Speaker 6: it hit clearing a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: That's many Gerard Manny was a top executive at Warner
Speaker 1: who led the charge to buy Atari in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Manny is ninety now and he sees Atari's downfall as
Speaker 1: one built partially from arrogance. Atari had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: get Donkey Kong all to themselves, but they didn't.
Speaker 7: It was there.
Speaker 6: Having another competitor is not good, but it never had
Speaker 6: me reallyver. What it had was Donkey kar And when
Speaker 6: I went into Kazar, who ran the company, I said,
Speaker 6: we knew how good Donkey car. We had the most
Speaker 6: arrogant programmers in the world in the coin oup division,
Speaker 6: and they were telling us this is one of the
Speaker 6: great games of all time. Why did you let the
Speaker 6: game go? And he spaid to me, well, they wanted
Speaker 6: two dollars a cartridge for a royalty. We aren't going
Speaker 6: to pay that. He couldn't. May what do you say, stupid,
Speaker 6: He said to growth margins or eighty eight percent on
Speaker 6: the cartridges, And that was going to be one of
Speaker 6: the best games anybody ever saw. And forgetting that, Calico.
Speaker 1: Got Donkey Kong was lost to some bad math at Atari.
Speaker 1: The other problem the Atari system simply had too many
Speaker 1: games and not all of them were coming from Atari.
Speaker 1: A growing number of third parties were able to produce
Speaker 1: games for the system without Atari's permission.
Speaker 6: We could not legally prevent it, and it had I
Speaker 6: forget the technicalities of it, but it had a lot
Speaker 6: to do with what they had done well done at
Speaker 6: the very beginning, and the way the twenties eacheter was
Speaker 6: designed and nobody thought it was a great prominent business.
Speaker 6: This is how Atari's out in trouble. The flood of software. Now,
Speaker 6: remember that every subsequent successful piece of video game hardware,
Speaker 6: having learned from our experience, you couldn't play out of
Speaker 6: cartridges unless you got a license from the parents.
Speaker 1: That's true. Video game companies got way more strict about
Speaker 1: these games after Atari messuck. So how could that happen?
Speaker 1: How can a company literally just crumble financially overnight. That's
Speaker 1: a twisty knot. But here's someone else that can give
Speaker 1: you a picture.
Speaker 5: ET had just come out and Atari made this, you
Speaker 5: know Howard Warshaws gave ET. So they had a press conference,
Speaker 5: they showed the game, and I was the only person
Speaker 5: from Atari there. Nobody else wanted to go.
Speaker 1: That's Larry Kaplan Larry was a programmer with Atari who
Speaker 1: left the company and then came back in time to
Speaker 1: see it well implode. Part of that was poor quality control.
Speaker 1: One of the most enduring stories of the Atari age
Speaker 1: is the debacle that was Et, a game based on
Speaker 1: the hit movie of the same name. Atari wanted, No
Speaker 1: needed it in time for the Christmas nineteen eighty two
Speaker 1: holiday season. That meant game designer Howard Scott Warsaw had
Speaker 1: just six weeks to program it. Spoiler, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to make a good game in six weeks. And to
Speaker 1: add insult to injury, reporters at the press conference thought
Speaker 1: Larry was Steven Spielberg. Both men wore glasses and had beards.
Speaker 5: Clearly mean way. I looked at reporters interviewing me, you know,
Speaker 5: for TV and local stations and newspaper, and they all
Speaker 5: kept figuring out I said no, and of course then
Speaker 5: nobody wanted to talk to me. It was fine, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I didn't know what to say. Anyway, I was there
Speaker 5: because nobody else wanted to be And yeah, I thought
Speaker 5: was somebody could be there double gay, So it was
Speaker 5: probably a bad idea.
Speaker 6: Anyway.
Speaker 1: To be clear, e T didn't kill Atari no one
Speaker 1: game can do that. Not really, it's a tidy way
Speaker 1: to summarize the story. But there was more going on.
Speaker 5: So a lot of it was that they done been successful,
Speaker 5: made a lot of money, and so they went out
Speaker 5: and sent it and they had people doing all kinds
Speaker 5: of crazy things, paying money for all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 5: and especially on the computer side, and you know, just
Speaker 5: wasting money. The huge buildings.
Speaker 8: So we had all these buildings, huge rents, and all
Speaker 8: these defences in these grouping all kinds of crazy wild
Speaker 8: you know, weird stuff, you know, titles that never sell
Speaker 8: by the day, hardware, they were working on a video phone.
Speaker 5: All kinds of stuff, and you know, they spent a
Speaker 5: lot of money. But pac Man did not sell well
Speaker 5: and they got returned and EP did not sell well,
Speaker 5: and so Christmas came and retailers didn't have a good
Speaker 5: Christmas because things weren't going well. So here it is
Speaker 5: December and the retailers are trying to return the games
Speaker 5: already for Christmas didn't even come because they have inventory,
Speaker 5: you know, all over the place, and you know, famously
Speaker 5: they buried some one of them buried with the landfill.
Speaker 5: They couldn't sell them at a Tariet didn't want to
Speaker 5: take them back.
Speaker 1: Thanks to a glut of games and a lot of
Speaker 1: bad games, revenues began falling. This wasn't an abrupt thing.
Speaker 1: The so called video game crash took time to unravel,
Speaker 1: but eventually Warner Communications wanted out, and that part happened.
Speaker 5: Fast Ober night. Retail January said hey, we're not interested.
Speaker 5: We'll not buy any more titles. We will return everything
Speaker 5: we have, all the units and everything else, and that
Speaker 5: was it. It's clear the company is going down to.
Speaker 1: The company entered into a complex deal to hand it
Speaker 1: off to another party, with options for the new owner
Speaker 1: to buy Warner stock and Warner able to acquire a
Speaker 1: minority interest in the new Atari if they chose. Some
Speaker 1: business experts characterized it as Warner practically giving Atari away.
Speaker 1: Warner didn't sell all of Atari. They kept the arcade
Speaker 1: division and Atari Tell the telecommunications arm of the company,
Speaker 1: but home consumer products were no longer under their banner.
Speaker 1: Gaming was also undergoing a radical transformation culturally, like Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll before it, Parents and child advocates were worried
Speaker 1: about gaming's effect on kids, and while sword Quest was
Speaker 1: offering real prizes, other games were offering real life consequences
Speaker 1: of a different sort. In nineteen eighty two, a man
Speaker 1: named Glenn Matta was playing pac Man at a bar
Speaker 1: in Riverhead, New York, when a woman began insisting it
Speaker 1: was her turn at the machine. Matta began fighting with
Speaker 1: the bar's bouncer before getting kicked out. He went home,
Speaker 1: retrieved a rifle, and headed back to the bar, opening fire,
Speaker 1: striking and killing a patron. Naturally, every story detailing the
Speaker 1: killing made sure to mention the dispute had been over
Speaker 1: a pac Man game. That same year, an eighteen year
Speaker 1: old Indiana man named Peter Bukowski was playing an arcade
Speaker 1: game called Brazil in pursuit of a high score. When
Speaker 1: he finally achieved it, he stumbled and fell over. People
Speaker 1: rushed to his aid and an ambulance was summoned, but
Speaker 1: it was too late. Peter was dead. The deputy coroner
Speaker 1: later determined he had died of a heart attack. There
Speaker 1: was some inflammation of his heart, but investigators couldn't determine
Speaker 1: whether the excitement of playing the game was or wasn't
Speaker 1: a contributing factor. The deputy coroner did add that Plukowski
Speaker 1: could have died from any kind of exertion, but he
Speaker 1: was playing a video game, so people jumped to that conclusion.
Speaker 1: Some towns even took the extraordinary step of banning miners
Speaker 1: from playing games. In Marlborough, Massachusetts, kids under eighteen were
Speaker 1: banned from arcades before three thirty in the afternoon on
Speaker 1: school days and after ten at night. Marlborough even mandated
Speaker 1: that arcades couldn't be opened within fifteen hundred feet of schools.
Speaker 1: The town of Bradley, Illinois, introduced similar policies, banning kids
Speaker 1: under sixteen from all arcids. It was turning into footloose
Speaker 1: for video games.
Speaker 8: Jerry.
Speaker 7: Video games are the latest craze to sweep the country.
Speaker 7: In most of the world, too, millions of people are
Speaker 7: addicted to hours of gazing at electronic images on game screens,
Speaker 7: in arcades and in their own homes. What makes video
Speaker 7: games so popular? We search for an answer as we
Speaker 7: begin a special series on video fever Games people play.
Speaker 1: Critics believed kids spending six or seven hours a day
Speaker 1: playing games, or in what one dubbed an airtile electronic womb,
Speaker 1: growing numb to reality. If the games didn't do it,
Speaker 1: maybe the recreational drugs frequently bought and sold in the
Speaker 1: CD or arcades. Did some even believed kids sold drugs
Speaker 1: just to have the money to play video games. Between
Speaker 1: video game hysteria and market saturation, every penny of Atari
Speaker 1: going in and out was examined in detail under its
Speaker 1: new ownership. One thing that stood out was sword Quest.
Speaker 1: When the company was sold in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, two of the five contests had been held.
Speaker 1: There was still water World and Airworld, along with the
Speaker 1: grand finale where all four winners would vie for the sword.
Speaker 1: That was one hundred thousand dollars just in prizes, not
Speaker 1: to mention airfare for dozens of people, plus hotel, and
Speaker 1: you need to feed them. A safe assumption is that
Speaker 1: it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars to finish sword Quest in the way
Speaker 1: Atari well the old Atari had promised. It had seemed
Speaker 1: like a great idea just two years prior, But then again,
Speaker 1: everything seemed like a great idea when you were making
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars. If Atari was compiling a
Speaker 1: list of unnecessary expenses, then acting as a travel agent
Speaker 1: for a couple dozen gamers had to be near the
Speaker 1: top of the list. But here's the thing about contests,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to finish them. There are legal
Speaker 1: protections in place for contest entrants so they don't get
Speaker 1: financially harmed or cheated by contest promoters. Hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people had purchased the games on the premise they
Speaker 1: could if they solved the puzzles and got the right phrase,
Speaker 1: be eligible for prizes. If Atari simply terminated the contest,
Speaker 1: they might be subjecting themselves to legal action, maybe a
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission investigation, maybe a state law violation. Here's
Speaker 1: Stephen Bell.
Speaker 2: For the second game. There was another friend that we
Speaker 2: met up with, a guy who had was really into this.
Speaker 2: We became good friends, and he lived out there in Fresnel,
Speaker 2: and so he was following everything that was happening real close,
Speaker 2: and he was kind of keeping me informed that a
Speaker 2: Tari was sold in the sky Bottom and we'll see
Speaker 2: what's going to happen to contest. And I guess say
Speaker 2: it took a year before funny, somebody convinced him that
Speaker 2: you've got to do something here. You bought the company,
Speaker 2: you bought this contest.
Speaker 1: So Atari handed it off to an attorney to figure
Speaker 1: it out. That process was protracted, lasting about two years.
Speaker 1: The deadline to enter water World was April nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Stephen got his letter in August nineteen eighty six. After
Speaker 1: all that time, What that attorney came up with was this,
Speaker 1: only Stephen Bell and Michael Rideout had guaranteed slots in
Speaker 1: the finals to compete for the sword. Everybody else who
Speaker 1: had participated in Earth World and Fireworld had their chance
Speaker 1: to compete, but only Stephen and Michael won. That left
Speaker 1: the two of them, plus the winning entries for water World,
Speaker 1: as the players who had the potential to win the
Speaker 1: remaining prizes. But in order to end the contest, there
Speaker 1: needed to be a unanimous decision between the two players.
Speaker 1: If one didn't agree, then it would have to go forward.
Speaker 1: That created a kind of union. Maybe Stephen and Michael
Speaker 1: could join forces and demand Atari offer a more lucrative settlement.
Speaker 1: Not that Atari's solution was cheap. Because Stephen and Michael
Speaker 1: had already won their respective games. They were each offered
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars. Neither one had submitted a correct water
Speaker 1: World entry, but that didn't really matter. The chance to win.
Speaker 1: The sword was already promised to both of them. They
Speaker 1: didn't need to win the remaining two games. Michael Rideout
Speaker 1: would later tell gaming journalist and historian John Hardy that
Speaker 1: he tried to call Stephen to see what Stephen wanted
Speaker 1: to do, but he couldn't get in touch.
Speaker 2: I was apartment hopping, So that's probably, unfortunately not of surprise,
Speaker 2: because you know, back in the day to have the
Speaker 2: Internet and everything else to track somebody down with, you know,
Speaker 2: if a phone numbering in service no more. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: as I didn't hear that, But I should have told them.
Speaker 2: I should have came back with a counter offer, saying, well,
Speaker 2: what the contest is done, then I win.
Speaker 1: Both men struggled with the decision. The sword was valuable,
Speaker 1: holding it aloft would be the pinnacle of the most
Speaker 1: spectacular contest in video games up to that point. Did
Speaker 1: they want to cash in their chips or let it ride?
Speaker 4: We should have known this would happen.
Speaker 3: Now that we've gained a third talisman on this third.
Speaker 4: World, the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery appears in the air,
Speaker 4: mocking us with its nearness for all that we cannot
Speaker 4: touch it.
Speaker 1: Finally, Stephen came to a decision. It was one he
Speaker 1: had to arrive at in a kind of bubble, not
Speaker 1: knowing which way Michael was leaning.
Speaker 2: And at the time, I'm like, well, we're in through
Speaker 2: the first money I won buying a car and stuff,
Speaker 2: and fifteen grandy come in handy. So my thought processor
Speaker 2: as well, I can't give up fifteen grand and ended
Speaker 2: up losing. Of course, I went, okay, I'll take the money.
Speaker 1: Michael wasn't sure Steven was going to agree either, but
Speaker 1: he felt the same way. The guaranteed money was too
Speaker 1: much to ignore. Within months, Stephen and Michael got a
Speaker 1: check for fifteen thousand dollars each, as well as another prize.
Speaker 2: I've had people over the years, and what do you
Speaker 2: think happened to it? Well, I think mister Jack Fremielle
Speaker 2: took him in dirt somewhere in his family. I don't know,
Speaker 2: you never know, but everything that's what happened to emerginally.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually I didn't hang with her until about ten years
Speaker 2: ago because of course, you know, you got this story
Speaker 2: to tell all your life. And one of my ex
Speaker 2: coworkers about ten years ago, so he's all up on
Speaker 2: Xbox and he asked me, Yeah, you got one, says no.
Speaker 2: He said to wait a minute, you wonder how much
Speaker 2: money are playing a video games that you aren't even
Speaker 2: playing him anymore. They also, out of the blue, they
Speaker 2: sent I don't know if they sall to Michael. I'll
Speaker 2: sure they probably did their last video games system, the
Speaker 2: seventy eight hundred system. They sent to me as a
Speaker 2: little bonus prize that I didn't even know about. All
Speaker 2: Sun just showed up one day.
Speaker 1: A new Atari seventy eight hundred gaming system which promised
Speaker 1: better graphics. They also got their choice of games for
Speaker 1: the system. Mis pac Man sent to Pete Joust, but
Speaker 1: not Airworld, the fourth and final game in the sword
Speaker 1: Quest series, was being shelved indefinitely. It was the bad
Speaker 1: Girl of the eighties, a piece of lost media tucked
Speaker 1: away into a vault, never to be seen by the public.
Speaker 1: So there were no winners for air World to settle with.
Speaker 1: That still left the ten people who submitted the correct
Speaker 1: answer for water World and had a winning essay entry. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Russ Perry wasn't one of them.
Speaker 3: They were sending out like little certificates with each contest,
Speaker 3: and I think we had gotten that certificate and the
Speaker 3: indication that hey, you got it right, but you got
Speaker 3: a tiebreaker.
Speaker 1: Russ got a certificate crowning him something like a Supreme
Speaker 1: Sage of Sorcery or another made up title as consolation.
Speaker 1: That left one dangling thread. What was a Torri going
Speaker 1: to do with the ten water World finalists, whose essays
Speaker 1: they had already accepted and who had been promised a
Speaker 1: trip to California for the contest. According to one video
Speaker 1: game historian, only one solution was possible. Atari would have
Speaker 1: to hold a water World tournament and award the winner
Speaker 1: the crown, and they'd have to do it in secret.
Speaker 1: There's a very nice coffee table book called The Art
Speaker 1: of Atari, written by Tim Lapatino and released in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It features beautiful reproductions of all the amazing video game
Speaker 1: box art produced by Atari artists like Warren Chang, Terry Hoff,
Speaker 1: Steve Hendrix, Evelyn Cito, and several others. Seriously check out
Speaker 1: some Atari box art online. It's terrific. The Art of
Speaker 1: Atari also served as a breezy history of the company
Speaker 1: on the subject of sword Quest. Lapatino writes, quote the
Speaker 1: contest legally needed to be completed so the Crown of
Speaker 1: Life was allegedly awarded to the winner of a semi
Speaker 1: public competition of several entrants unquote. While that's interesting, what
Speaker 1: does semi public mean? Do contestants have to wear masks?
Speaker 1: Where they all swornto secrecy? Dig a little more and
Speaker 1: you'll find an Atari historian named Kurt Vendel. With another
Speaker 1: historian named Martin Goldberg, Vendell co wrote a twenty twelve
Speaker 1: book Atari Inc. Business Is Fun. He also amassed an
Speaker 1: incredible assortment of Atari games, consoles, papers, and other ephemera.
Speaker 1: He's long been considered one of the foremost authorities on
Speaker 1: a Tar's long storied, and sometimes pot and cocaine infused legacy.
Speaker 1: Kurt even went exploring in dumpsters belonging to the company
Speaker 1: to salvage the history it was too quick to discard.
Speaker 1: He was once escorted from the property, a badge of
Speaker 1: honor for any cultural archaeologist. His Atari History Museum, which
Speaker 1: had an online presence and occasionally a physical one at
Speaker 1: gaming conventions, was a repository for all things Atari, store displays, prototypes, schematics.
Speaker 1: He even worked with Atari to release a retro gaming device,
Speaker 1: the Atari Flashback. Drawing on his skills as an engineer,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, he found that he likely had
Speaker 1: more of the company's history on paper than the company itself.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety nine, The Village Voice Crown Kurt king Pong,
Speaker 1: so he had real credibility as a journalist Anatari archivist.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a random fan spinning a tail, but someone
Speaker 1: who was constantly researching Atari's history. Kurt repeated the claim
Speaker 1: a few times on Internet message boards that Atari was
Speaker 1: legally obligated to hold a water World contest and that
Speaker 1: someone was awarded the crown. Here's Russ Perry.
Speaker 3: So I don't recall the exact timing of all that.
Speaker 3: I think it might have been years later that I
Speaker 3: found that they allegedly did hold the contest. So there
Speaker 3: were a lot of people out there, and we were
Speaker 3: all kind of connecting as best we could, and you know,
Speaker 3: talking this stuff through, and you never knew how much
Speaker 3: was hearsay a rumor. You'd eventually, like, hear some stories
Speaker 3: over a few times and you'd realize there might be
Speaker 3: a grain of truth. Because I've heard this from guys
Speaker 3: across the country now. But it leads me to wonder
Speaker 3: if he was speculating or had actually heard it from somebody.
Speaker 1: Even if Atari wanted to terminate the contest and get
Speaker 1: out of the last game and the finals, water World
Speaker 1: had already been released and correct entries had already been accepted.
Speaker 1: How could Atari deny those contestants a chance? More specifically,
Speaker 1: how could Warner than the owners of Atari, deny them
Speaker 1: the chance? That the contest was held quietly, which for
Speaker 1: the gaming industry simply meant not publicizing the results in
Speaker 1: gaming magazines was apparently important. It allowed Atari to put
Speaker 1: sword Quest to bed and avoid awarding the remaining two prizes,
Speaker 1: the Philosopher's Stone and the Sword. But where did Kurt
Speaker 1: get his information from? Almost certainly from speaking with former
Speaker 1: Warner and Atari employees, But Kurt never sourced this specific information,
Speaker 1: at least not publicly. What's more, no one has ever
Speaker 1: come out to say they were awarded the crown or
Speaker 1: even participated in a water World playoff. Did Atari make
Speaker 1: them sign non disclosure agreements? If they did, would they
Speaker 1: still feel bound to them four decades later? It's not likely.
Speaker 1: While we'd like to ask Kurt, that's not possible either.
Speaker 1: Kurt Vendel passed away at the age of fifty three
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty from a heart ailment, which proved to
Speaker 1: be a devastating blow to the Atari fan community. We'll
Speaker 1: have to go with what we know, and what we
Speaker 1: know is that when Michael Rideout discussed his win years later,
Speaker 1: he said that the ten water World contestants received a
Speaker 1: similar offer to what he and Stephen had received, just
Speaker 1: much less of it. The ten gamers got two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or twenty five hundred dollars each to relinquish their
Speaker 1: stake in the water World finals. Stephen heard the same thing.
Speaker 1: Remember that Stephen had a friend in Fresno who was
Speaker 1: in the Atari loop. In fact, Stephen is the first
Speaker 1: person to corroborate Michael's.
Speaker 2: Story just it was a buyout, that it was. They
Speaker 2: had ten people waiting to go play for the third one.
Speaker 2: That's when it hit the wall. And so they sent
Speaker 2: out a letter to the twelve people involved if they
Speaker 2: just wanted to end it, and here's some money. So
Speaker 2: they offered Michael and I fifteen thousand, and they offered
Speaker 2: these other ten people twenty five hundred to give up
Speaker 2: their shot at a twenty five thousand dollars a crown.
Speaker 1: Stephen has also heard the urban legend about the secret
Speaker 1: water World tournament, but remember that he and a number
Speaker 1: of contestants kept in touch with each other at least
Speaker 1: for a while, and there was a chance one of
Speaker 1: them would have been a water World finalist.
Speaker 2: I read that supposedly somebody won the crown. I'm not
Speaker 2: buying it. I read that they had the ten people
Speaker 2: that they actually went through with that contest, but I'm
Speaker 2: not buying it because the legal ramifications of that. If
Speaker 2: that actually happened, yeah, I don't think so. But you know,
Speaker 2: unfortunately nobody in our little group was one of them,
Speaker 2: because no, of course we were talking, so we all
Speaker 2: had the same wrong answer.
Speaker 1: Nor does Steven regret taking the money, though he's since
Speaker 1: come up with what he believed would have been a
Speaker 1: better counter offer.
Speaker 2: It took me five years. About five years after that,
Speaker 2: I realized what I should have done. I should have
Speaker 2: asked him for the sword. I should have told him.
Speaker 2: I should have came back with a counter office saying, well,
Speaker 2: if the contest is done, then I win. Because I
Speaker 2: went to two of them and won one of them.
Speaker 2: Michael wasn't that the first one, and I was even
Speaker 2: going to tell him, you can give Michael the crown
Speaker 2: and the other prize, and we each get our fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars prizes, and we're all happy because that wouldn't
Speaker 2: have cost him any money.
Speaker 1: But that brings up another question. Keep in mind that
Speaker 1: in most all of the advertising material for Sort Quest,
Speaker 1: the prizes appeared as illustrations. There were no photos of
Speaker 1: the Crown, Philosopher's Stone, or Sword of Ultimate Sorcery. The
Speaker 1: game's creator, Todd Frye, never saw them. With Atari ending
Speaker 1: the contest, was there even a sword to hand out?
Speaker 1: Or had Atari been waiting until the last possible moment
Speaker 1: to commission a jewel encrusted blade from their company siblings
Speaker 1: at the Franklin Mint. Here's Ross Perry Junior.
Speaker 3: I remember back in the day, some people speculated that
Speaker 3: they weren't actually making the prizes until like right before
Speaker 3: the contest the championship.
Speaker 1: Had hundreds of thousands of people been playing for a
Speaker 1: sword that never actually existed. The answer to that question
Speaker 1: would come some thirteen years later and nearly three thousand
Speaker 1: miles away, and of all places, inside a thrift store.
Speaker 1: That's next time on sword Quest, the.
Speaker 9: Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 9: and School of Humans. This episode was written by Jake
Speaker 9: Rosson and hosted by Jamie Loftus producers are Miranda Hawkins
Speaker 9: and Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
Speaker 9: Brandon Barr, and Jason English. Our show editor is Mary Doo.
Speaker 9: Audio engineering by Graham Gibson, Research and fact checking by
Speaker 9: Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 9: This episode was sound designed by Josh Fisher, mixing and
Speaker 9: mastering by Jake Cook. Show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Voices
Speaker 9: in this episode are provided by Hayley Ellman and Graham Parker.