WEBVTT - 6: Plunder 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:07.880 In two thousand and two. Ken van Muzbergen is, like 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:12.120 many Atari fans, on the lookout for vintage Atari items, 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:17.000 and by this point pretty much anything Atari is considered vintage. 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.040 The heyday of the classic twenty six hundred console has 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.360 come and gone. The video game scene is dominated by 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:28.800 Nintendo Sony and the upstart Microsoft. Atari is the retro choice, 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.159 an echo of childhood. It's fun to pick up old 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:36.760 games on eBay and usually pretty cheap, but not always cheap. 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.199 Ken is on eBay and he sees a listing that 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:44.600 stops him in his tracks. The one thing, it's the price. 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:47.440 I think it was an excess of eight to ten 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:48.320 thousand dollars. 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.080 For another, it's the game. 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:55.400 And then all of a sudden, this prototype in quotes 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:59.040 my air quotes shows up on eBay, so request air 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.480 World like no, can't be. 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:07.640 Like many Atari collectors, he's well aware of sword Quest, 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.120 the contest that promised players a pile of gold treasure 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:15.200 for winning one of four games, Earth World, fire World, 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.880 water World, and the mythical final game air World. 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.720 Tara It's our final challenge, a world made of air, 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.199 Quick to the Flying Horse. 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:36.000 Those first three games were released, then In nineteen eighty six, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:40.679 Atari's new management team canceled the contest, throwing the remaining 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:44.640 prizes into limbo and the fourth game, Airworld, into the 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.720 proverbial trash. It never appeared on store shelves. 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.840 I mean, this is probably the most sought after prototype 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.680 in the history of the Atari twenty one hundred. I 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:58.440 mean Airworld, the fourth part to the sword Quest series, 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:00.000 the never released Airworld. 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:04.680 But here it is, i'm eBay of all places, an 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:09.240 original air World cartridge, never before seen, long thought to 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.160 be vaporware, never even finished on a programming level. If 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:15.880 it existed at all, it could have only been as 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.680 a single copy kept within the walls of Atari alone. 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.320 Prototype Ken is so captivated by the game that it 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.160 takes him a minute to register the price thousands and 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:27.919 still going. 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.320 But then, you know, the bids start to get astronomically high. 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.680 I'm like, I got no chance of getting this. Hopefully 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:35.560 it goes to someone I know. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:41.160 But then there's trouble. Even with the bidding increasing, the 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:43.760 auction is suddenly terminated and. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.239 Then it ends just as abruptly, like, Okay, this is 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:49.320 kind of fishy here. 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.240 Air World is a part of the Lost sword Quest treasures. 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:56.880 Like the prizes themselves, it appears to keep slipping through 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:58.079 the hands of collectors. 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:03.200 So what is this? I was curious to found just 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.679 what it was. Was it something that escaped the lab? Oh? No, 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:08.239 it was a lot of weird stuff went on Atari 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:10.520 at the end. There were so many things going on. 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:11.600 No one knew what was going on. 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.799 But where had it come from? Who was selling it? 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.120 And if Airworld had finally surfaced, was it possible the 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:22.680 one hundred thousand dollars in missing prizes wouldn't be far behind? 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.639 For iHeartRadio, this is the legend of sword Quest. I'm 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.919 your host, Jamie Loftus and this is episode six Plunder. 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.040 Sixteen years before Airworld popped up on eBay like a 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.240 missing kid on a milk carton, Atari had done away 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:49.320 with sword Quest. The prizes vanished. They were all made 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.840 by the Franklin Mint, the collectibles company that specialized in 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.600 limited edition art, and some believed they were returned to 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.520 the Mint, only to be destroyed or sold to someone 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.720 at the yard sale. See the last episode for details. 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:07.160 A lot of collectors in pop culture historians care about 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:10.960 the fate of those prizes, but some Atari collectors are 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.840 Kart people. They scoured the internet for classic cartridges, preferably 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.719 still in the original box and with the owner's manual. 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.400 The rarer the better. The original Mario Brothers game, which 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.360 came out for the Atari twenty six hundred before Nintendo 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:29.680 launched in America. That might go for a grand in 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:34.760 good condition. Joust Asteroids a few hundred bucks plus shipping 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.360 Moon Patrol without a box, Well, that one we can 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:41.920 let go for under twenty dollars no refunds. For Ken, 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:45.599 a software developer based in San Diego, getting back into 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:49.200 Atari after experiencing it as a kid wasn't just about 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.400 watching games pile up. It was a kind of therapy. 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:55.920 The whole story about me getting back into Atari is 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.880 an interesting story in its own, but it was when 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:02.040 my mom was diagon gnosed with als lugeeric disease in 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.400 nineteen ninety six. The social worker. That's a pretty devastating 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:08.559 thing the news to get to that at that time 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.320 in your life. Really, you know, the person that's been 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.400 there for you, has been your strength for you, is 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.920 now at some point not going to be there anymore, 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.680 And the best thing to do is to not think 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:22.240 about that. Of course, that's easier said than done. But 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:26.719 find a hobby, find something that brought you joy in 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:28.920 your life at one point, and maybe revisit it. So 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.720 I sort of like, I really loved that Attori twice 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:34.760 two hundred. So I dug it out of storage, found 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:37.279 all my games again, found all my stuff again, and 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.960 started collecting. I picked up Atari computers. I started picking 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.599 up all their consoles I didn't own before, like the television, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.600 the Clco vision, got the AIO hundred Exil for the 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.559 first time, so I started getting all that stuff again 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:51.560 and getting back into that, which really helped. 0:05:52.040 --> 0:05:54.840 Ken played sword Quest as a kid. It was an 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.840 exercise in keeping one's expectations in check. 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:00.599 We just couldn't figure out what was going on. For 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:02.599 the most part. I was mainly in it for the 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:04.719 story in the comics and pretty much playing the games 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:07.440 for the games. I actually had more fun reading the 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.000 comic books than I did playing the games. Quite honestly, 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:13.160 the comics really helped. I mean I read the comic 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.160 and then I wanted the other games for the comic. 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.520 Quite honestly. I mean, we still played the games, but 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:20.920 I want to know where the story went. We got 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.840 all those games because the comics were in them. 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:30.080 Ken played Earthworld, Fireworld, water World, and then watched the 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.159 video game industry burn to the ground before anyone could 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:37.240 get Airworld. For over a decade, it was understood that 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:41.520 Airworld was never finished. The game was intended to be 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.440 a first person adventure, with Tor, one of the two 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:49.039 heroes of the story, riding astride a flying horse as 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.440 one does. It was supposed to be based on the 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:54.400 I Chain, just as all the sword Quest games were 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.560 inspired by different philosophies. It would be the grand finale 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:02.040 to the series, with players finally finding out the fate 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:06.000 of siblings Tour and Tara in their fight against King Tyrannus. 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:10.720 But since DC never created a comic, you'll have to 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:11.760 use your imagination. 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.800 You're a jerk, King Terrannist. I hope you get bought 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:19.800 out by a capitalist who forgets you eat. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:25.080 Exist up yours, Tour. It's a free market. Atari Sports 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:29.320 Quarter revenue forecast. We're a disaster. They sealed their own bait. 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.040 Go play in traffic Tyrannus. 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:34.360 Ah. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.760 Although Airworld was never released, that doesn't mean that no 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.800 one worked on it. Pod Fry, the creator of sword Quest, 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:46.840 started programming it before everything went south. Here's Todd. 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.080 I started working on Airworld before water World was done. 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:56.000 So the story there is that I finished Fireworld and 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.400 put it in the pipeline, and I started working on 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:04.560 air World, and I had some concept animation and some 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.960 concept art, and I had this thing, some pretty interesting 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:14.000 stuff to me, and I got asked to do Zivius. 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:19.160 I got pulled off air World. Zevius was a popular 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.119 coin up game at the time, maybe and management wanted 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.200 it done. Other programmers threw up their hands in despair, 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:28.520 and they asked me to give it a shot, and 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:29.320 I went ahead and did it. 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:32.560 By the time he got back to Airworld, there was 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.559 no more sword Quest. The final game was only partially assembled. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:42.040 That should have been case closed, except well, except Todd 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.640 Fry left Atari in nineteen eighty four. It's possible that 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.560 Todd began working on Airworld, sure, and he didn't finish it, 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:54.240 but that doesn't mean someone else at Atari didn't complete 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:57.600 the game. So it could be released without being associated 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.560 with the contest. They wouldn't even have to call it 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.800 air World. There was precedent for games being abandoned and 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.440 then rediscovered in the nineteen nineties, someone went to a 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.640 flea market and picked up a bizarre Atari cartridge that 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.680 was unlabeled. When they plugged it into their vintage Atari console, 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.920 they saw a game that was never known to exist, 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:28.880 aqua Venture. The game, which was about an underwater explorer 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.560 searching for lost treasure, had never been released by Atari. 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.720 Somehow the prototype had found its way out of the 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.040 offices and at a yard sale. So who's to say 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.360 this eBay listing for Airworld couldn't be a similar situation. 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.679 Maybe this was an incomplete version set aside when Todd left, 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:51.160 or a complete version finished by someone else. So Ken 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.280 van Mersbergen clicked on the eBay username of the seller 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.280 offering Airworld and dashed off a message he wanted more 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.800 details where the game him come from, But he can 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.760 get a copy for archival purposes. Can wait it. And 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.800 then he got to notice a new message. 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.880 But he was always there's always an excuse as to 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:15.920 why he couldn't send me the carters to dump for him. 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:20.319 He didn't trust FedEx, hedn't trust ups, doesn't trust anybody. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.920 The seller didn't want to send Ken the game so 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.040 he could dump it. That's a slang term for making 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.120 a copy of a game from a rom chip as 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.800 a kind of backup, and well, you can see his point. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.080 He had something valuable, why make a copy of it. 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:40.400 Atari collectors were beginning to buzz about the listing for gamers, 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.320 this was a grail. And then the seller introduced himself 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:48.280 to the Atari community. He posted on Atari Age, a 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.240 forum for Atari devotees. He explained how he had taken 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:53.880 possession of air World. 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.640 I think a story was he bought it from an 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.680 Exittari employee, then later it was his who got it 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:02.839 from the Exitari employer. He got it from his brother 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:04.840 and it probably morphed again. 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:09.920 After that, the seller fielded a lot of questions. Sometimes 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.720 the game crashes, he said, when picking up an object 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.280 or entering your room. It was glitchy, but that was 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:19.760 all to be expected for an old prototype. Even Todd 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:22.600 Fry posted to say it was possible the seller had 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.840 gotten hold of an incomplete version that had somehow escaped 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:30.120 Atari's offices. The seller also had, as the kids would say, 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:31.360 though was seen. 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.000 And then because everybody's asking, well, can you post some screenshots? 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:37.880 Can you post some video? Can we see something? 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:43.800 One troubling thing was that the screenshots looked extremely clear clean. 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.000 This was a console that was twenty years old by 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.880 this point, so how had the seller gotten such sharp images? 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.600 When they started examining the screenshots, he said they were 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:59.760 taken off a video capture card, which you said, is 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.360 this sophisticated one? But the AHTI all and wonder ve. 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.440 The VE stands for Value Edition. It's a consumer level 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.160 video card, and he says he's achieving these crystal clear 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.280 screenshots from an RF modulator from a twenty six hundred, 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:17.040 which wasn't known. They have the best video anyway. It's 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.640 a non modern system, he says, And it happens to 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:25.559 be the same resolution as the screenshots from the Stella emulator. Coincidence, 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:27.400 I think not. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:32.000 Let's translate Kenn here. Basically, the game looked like it 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.240 was coming from an emulator, which runs old games on 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.280 modern equipment as opposed to old games on old systems. 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.199 Imagine someone telling you they found an old VHS tape 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:45.360 and then showing you a screenshot that looked like it 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.720 came from a Blu ray. It didn't add up. Some 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.800 collectors began doing a detailed analysis of the screenshots, treating 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:56.360 it like this appruder film this pixel looks like it 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.720 might be from an earlier sword Quest game. That pixel 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.880 could wouldn't have been generated on Atari technology of the era. 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.760 It became a matter of forensics. The character in the 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.959 game had a pink head, red shirt and black pants. 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.800 One single tiny pixel meant to represent his hand was green. 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.559 Green was a background for the original Earth World game. 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.680 It was as though someone had simply cut and pasted 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.960 the graphic from an existing sword Quest title. And another 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.720 bit of incriminating information, the horse on the title screen 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.319 looked a lot like a horse from another game. 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:35.000 The horse and rider is from the Lord of the 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.000 ringsportotype developed by Parker Brothers. And he said, oh, back then, 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:42.360 forms artis used to reduce gravies all the time. Yeah, 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.680 but these are two different companies, Atari and Parker Brothers, 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:48.679 and they did not have that kind of working relationship. 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.599 The air World story was getting stranger, but there was 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.960 one element of the Seller story that rang true. The 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.520 idea that something of value could get lost at a 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.839 Tari was no fiction. When the video game industry collapsed, 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:07.640 Atari went up for sale, and like a lot of transactions, 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:12.400 it was messy, chaotic, and some things or prizes may 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.840 have gone flying under the radar or in this case, 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:27.000 under someone's jacket. It's reasonable to imagine Atari would take 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.840 precautions over the sword quest prizes, like a bank watching 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.240 over valuables at a safety deposit box. And at the 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.800 contests they did, normally a security guard was standing over them. 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:43.200 But that doesn't account for the absolute chaos that was 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:48.600 Atari changing ownership. In summer nineteen eighty four, Warner Communications 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:53.240 sold Atari to Jack Tremmel, a computer hardware mastermind who 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.880 had made the Commodore sixty four one of the best 0:14:55.880 --> 0:15:01.440 selling personal computers in history. That's true, even to Warner 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.040 held a kind of fire sale, selling Jack Atari's consumer 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:10.440 division and handing over the company's property, filing cabinets, chairs, desks, 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:19.720 even entire buildings. It all happened very quickly, but the 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:24.200 new leaner Atari didn't need so much stuff. Buildings had 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:28.680 to go, space had to be consolidated, and so did employees. 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:33.480 It was possibly the darkest chapter in Atari's long history. 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.320 In Hallway after Hallway, where star programmers like Todd Fry 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.120 once ran up and down and smoked incredible amounts of weed, 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.800 there was just silence in side offices. People had left 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.160 so abruptly that they had left monitors on gone in 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:54.040 mid assignment. It was like the rapture had hit Atari, 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.360 with most people disappearing completely out of sight. Here's an 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:02.400 example of the confusion. The lack of inventory keeping was 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.960 so profound that it wasn't until months later that one 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:11.880 Atari employee discovered Atari owned a large warehouse full of BMW's. 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.080 These were very expensive cars that were leased for upper management. 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.040 They were told to drop off the cars, which were 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:23.880 packed in so tightly that some workers had to crawl 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:30.080 out of the warehouse window to get out. An entire 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:35.040 fleet of company vehicles were left to collect dust, virtually forgotten. 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:39.040 If that could happen to cars, what could happen to 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.200 some contest prizes. Here's another thing about Atari. At this time, 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.440 there was a lot of employee turnover. Marketing. Employees with 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:51.320 knowledge of the contest were out the door. Atari's new 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.640 management knew about sword Quest, they had to address it, 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.280 but they may not have known about the prizes until 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.720 they went missing. Along the hallways of a Atari were 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:06.160 stacks of computers, printers, keyboards, files, and plenty of employees 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:10.240 just wandering through, some of whom seized an opportunity to 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.879 grab some work from home supplies despite their employment status. 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.119 It wasn't as though Atari fired everyone. It's just that 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:22.760 most employees weren't part of the sale and weren't being retained. Actually, 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:26.360 let's just be blunt. There was employee left during the transition, 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:31.320 mostly office equipment. This chaos went on for days, for 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:35.280 over a week, stuff being wheeled out, people being ushered out, 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:39.520 papers being shredded. No one aware that BMW's were just 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:44.520 sitting around, and possibly no one noticing that a bundle 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.800 of very expensive prizes were in the hands of a 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:52.520 disgruntled employee, one who was being unceremoniously dumped in an 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.560 effort to trim down costs. It could have gone under 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:00.600 someone's coat or in a filing cabinet. Here's Todd Fry. 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.399 I don't know how much the prize that exists and 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.680 known as so I wouldn't be surprised if a couple 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:10.800 of them disappeared in inventory shrinkage. And I'm saying I 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:16.000 wouldn't be surprised if someone melted them down and you know. 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:16.040 Bought drugs. 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:19.840 It's like down payment of a house back then. Actually, 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.160 it's alcurely really shocking. You could like buy a car, 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.800 put yourself through college. It's been done. I wouldn't be 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.159 surprised if a couple of them just straight up disappeared 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.840 to conversion. I would be relatively surprised if someone had 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:35.280 them and was hiding them. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.320 The Great Atari Exodus of nineteen eighty four could have 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:44.480 seen the remnants of sword Quest disappear forever in someone's trunk, 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:47.119 in a safe that was wheeled out on a dolly, 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.879 in a warehouse that no one even knew existed. Isn't 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.840 that how most of history is lost, not by purposeful neglect, 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.280 but by the passage of time and the changing of 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.280 the guard. No one was responsible for guarding those treasures, 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.800 and it's possible someone simply plundered them. 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.280 What a strange thing to have is part of my history. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.600 I don't think about this that often, but I made 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:17.840 that sword come into existence through an act of manifestation. 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:26.720 I thought grail Quest sort of sorcery Franklin meant, and poof, 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:33.359 there was sixty thousand dollars precious metals and stones, and 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.520 it is out there somewhere. It may have been disassembled 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:41.160 for cash, but somewhere out there is this product of 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.879 my imagination weird. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.600 At least the other product of Todd's imagination, air World 0:19:49.119 --> 0:20:01.200 had been found, hadn't it? Ken was frustrated. He decided 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.479 to take another look at the message Todd fry had 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:08.240 posted in support of this mythical air World find. This time, 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.639 he looked more closely at the return email. It was 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.120 your standard letter number combo. When he searched for it, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.760 he found it was mentioned in another post, this time 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.200 along with the email used by the ebayseller Jeremy. 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:26.040 When I first saw the posting was signed you know 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.200 a Fry, thought, did he actually say this? It's really 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.320 tough to know. And then I did some more digging 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.600 and I found the email address that posted that. That 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:41.119 email was linked to Jeremy's other account. Didn't take too 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:45.600 much digging to find that, And then I posted that saying, Okay, 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.800 he's faked the email, which just so happens to describe 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:56.240 this prototype he has, so it gets deeper and everyone's 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:58.280 coming out of the woodwork on it. We got Todd 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:01.160 Frye even looked at the photograph and said, no, that's 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:01.720 not our world. 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:07.680 The seller was being confronted virtually anyway, with overwhelming evidence 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.840 he had faked the whole thing, the game, the email 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:17.800 from Todd Fry, the screenshot. He acted surprised, He apologized 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:21.119 and vowed to find out what might have happened. He 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.600 asked that Angry Collectors didn't use any more foul language. 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:29.800 He didn't, of course take any responsibility. He had been 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:30.959 a victim too. 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:33.560 He never admits that it's fake. He's he's thinking if 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:35.399 it's a fake, that he's a victim too, because he 0:21:35.400 --> 0:21:38.720 bought it from somebody that they obviously faked it, but 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:41.320 he would never let any of us examine it. And 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:43.920 the photo of the character was always crainy. I mean, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.199 everybody was thanking me for outing him for faking that email. 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:51.399 That was just like the final straw. And then he 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.199 also he made a second account on atari age to 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:57.680 be a friend of him, who is the engineer who 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:00.560 set up the graphics workstation that took the pictures. And 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.520 then Albert, who was the moderator of atari Age, found 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.920 out that both those accounts originated from the same IP 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.000 address in the same physical location. He was trying either 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.720 to raise the value of his bs or something. He 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:16.760 disappeared around two thousand and four and we haven't heard 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:17.359 from him since. 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.280 Even now, Ken isn't sure what the seller's endgame was. 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.680 Has he programmed the game so anyone buying it would 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.639 be fooled into thinking it was air World? Would he 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:30.240 simply insist it must have gotten even. 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:35.120 Glitchier make some money at someone else's expense. And at 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:38.080 the time, eBay did not have the protections they have now. 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:40.920 If you pretty much can't get scanned on eBay now, 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:43.440 But back then, once the buyer paid his money and 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:46.680 the seller showed a tracking number or a shipment, eBay 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:47.320 was off the hook. 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.440 When Airworld was revealed as a fraud, it was a 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:56.320 total bummer for the Atari collecting community. Here was hope 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.719 something lost had been preserved and recovered. Only the it 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.919 was an impostor if you're a completist, someone who wanted 0:23:04.960 --> 0:23:08.760 to see the series finished, then it was almost maddening. 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:13.120 But think about movies or books for a second. Sometimes 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:18.400 authors or filmmakers leave behind unfinished works. Sometimes creators don't 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:22.200 get a chance to have their full vision realized. Orson 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:24.840 Wells didn't have the money to finish his Opus The 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:28.760 Other Side of the Wind, but another director, Peter Bogdanovitch, 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:33.280 helped complete it. Decades later, Frank Herbert couldn't keep writing 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.720 Dune books because Well he died, so his son Brian 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:41.520 took up the mantle. In video games, some players become 0:23:41.680 --> 0:23:47.040 programmers and their hobby becomes more participatory. So, following the 0:23:47.080 --> 0:23:51.359 Great air World scandal, Ken van Muzbergen decided to become 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:55.840 the Bogdanovich to Todd fryes orson Wells, he decided he 0:23:56.320 --> 0:23:59.680 would complete air World. He had been planning on a 0:23:59.720 --> 0:24:02.720 home brew or homemade game for a while. 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:06.200 Then I was thinking to myself, Okay, what game should 0:24:06.200 --> 0:24:09.440 I do? So I had to look back and think, okay, 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:13.280 sword quests Airworld never came out. 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.520 Ken reached out to Todd, the real Todd for advice. 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:20.119 Hey told me the air World was based on the 0:24:20.119 --> 0:24:23.680 Eaching because all of the short quest games were based 0:24:23.720 --> 0:24:26.600 on something. Earthworld was on the zodiac, Fireworld was the 0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:29.840 Tree of Life, and I forget what Water Word was 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:32.359 based on, but it was it was something similar in 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:37.000 those veins. So Airworld being, you know, the Philosopher's Stone 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:39.840 was your prize that the e Ching was chosen as 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:44.600 the basis, and the different trigrams and there's sixty four 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:46.960 different texagrams and then things of that. 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.480 This was a radical undertaking. Precious little of the game 0:24:52.600 --> 0:24:55.080 had been made, and what there was had to be 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:59.560