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