Swordquest color magazine advertisement The Swordquest collection of games for the Atari 2600 was part of a larger promotional contest called the “Swordquest Challenge”. Each game was based on a different element (“Fireworld”, “Earthworld”, “Waterworld”, and “Airworld”). The player took on the role of a warrior who must complete various challenges and puzzles in order to retrieve the ultimate prize, a real-life, solid-gold Sword.

The Swordquest series was marketed as having a grand prize of over $150,000 in cash and golden objects (created by commemorative coin manufacturer The Franklin Mint), and the contest was heavily advertised in Atari’s publications. The first three games were released and corresponding contests took place between 1982 and 1984. The fourth and final game, Airworld, was never officially released due to Atari’s financial struggles in 1983 and 1984. As a result, Atari canceled the promotion and the remaining prizes were never awarded. In fact, they may have been returned to Franklin Mint to be melted down (Grundhauser 2016).

While playing Swordquest, I don’t remember being joyfully enticed by a possible prize, but there was some sort of gravity added by it to the act of play. The possibility of winning gold somehow made playing the game a kind of child’s pantomime version of work. Reaching the prize would link it to the real world in a way that I could only imagine as a sort of eschaton where neither the game world nor the world of my life would need to continue. I imagined here the same sort of abrupt fantasy ending in which Arthur is taken to Avalon or Frodo to Valinor. I could also imagine the inverse—to grasp the prize might be to suffocate under the weight of the dungeon. To dematerialize or to become immeasurably heavy. To reach the dungeon’s MacGuffin would mean to gain total knowledge of it—to ascend from being a microbe in its gut to becoming its new architect.

  1. Grundhauser, Eric. 2016. “The Quest for the Real-Life Treasures of Atari’s Swordquest - Atlas Obscura.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-quest-for-the-reallife-treasures-of-ataris-swordquest.