How did Atari ever let Swordquest get out the door?

[Mind Master]

...I mean, I understand with Pac Man they were rushing to get the game out and make loads of cash. But Swordquest had no such deadline to meet. Why didn't somebody at atari look at it and say "this is crap, don't release it?"

 

I consider Swordquest the worst 2600 cartridge ever sold. And I'm including Froggo products.

[CT]

I actually liked Earthworld as a kid, although I was probably too little to know any better I played the rom a couple days ago and found it frustrating beyond belief.

[The Historian]

I dunno, that was state of the art RPG gaming. It certainly isn't an easy game.

 

Infact there has been only one game that I can think of in past 10 years that came close. That was Treasue Quest for the pc.

 

It amazes me that anyone figured anything out in that game though. Then again I remember it with the eyes of a 8 year old.

[sku_u]

It was intended to be used as a contest.

[lonesome_pa]

A cool contest with a gread idea....too bad it never saw the end.

[martymc1985]

Now I'm no big shot city Lawyer or anything but I do know what game's are good and what game's are bad. But let me type to you people that Swordquest is an o.k game, if you like those sort of thing's. ALF.

 

[Vic George 2K3]

Given that the Intellivision had some really advanced (for its time) action-based fantasy adventure games like the two Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games plus Imagic's Swords & Serpents, I was disappointed in Atari's Swordquest offerings since I was looking forward to something that was similar to Adventure but would offer more in the way of action. This going from room to room, playing watered-down mini-games in order to find various objects was not what I really wanted in an adventure game. Alas, the kind of adventure game I wanted to play would end up making its first appearance on the NES in the form of Legend Of Zelda. The only good thing that came out of the Swordquest experiment were the comics, and even at that, Atari could have done better.

[ATARIPITBULL]

As a kid, I could not get enough of Earthworld, the idea that I could win a prize and the story line of the comic book were great, but like most people it got hard to figure out the clues so I stopped playing.

 

[Room 34]

It seems to me that the best games are ones you can figure out without looking at the instruction manual. Even in the games of today, the only thing you really should need to read up about is the controls (since they're so much more complicated now).

 

That was the biggest problem with the SwordQuest series. Completely inscrutible without those stupid comic books!

[theaveng]

I dunno, that was state of the art RPG gaming.

RPG? (cough) Not even close! Role-playing games involve lots of numerical stats and battles and gradual character growth to stronger forms. Back then (1983?), the only RPG available was Dungeons & Dragons on PCs.

 

Swordquest was just your usual "running man" adventure game with stupid puzzles thrown in. Anyway, I remember reading and re-reading the comic book over-and-over and thinking, 'Why isn't the game as good as the comic?' I was VERY disappointed that I wasted $30 on this piece of sh;t.

[DaveAtari]

When I first heard of the concept of winning a big cash prize for playing a video game I said to myself...

" Self, you're pretty good at this Atari stuff, that $$$ is yours! "

 

After playing Earthworld a while I realized two things...

 

#1 I'm not nearly as good as I thought I was

#2 I may be schizophrenic

[The Historian]

RPG?  (cough)  Not even close!  Role-playing games involve lots of numerical stats and battles and gradual character growth to stronger forms.

 

Call it a puzzle game then.. However I find your definition of Role Playing a bit strict, but then I guess you could call that famous 'Hack and Slash' game 'Diablo' an RPG too. Personally I think the game was a secret plot by hardware developers to sell more mouses. Can you hear it?

 

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click..