Oh my God does this game bring back some painful memories! Were any of you older gamers a big enough sucker to invest hours into this God-awful title? Let me tell you a story from a long time ago. The year is 1982 and the home video gaming market is going at full speed. There is trouble looming on the horizon for home gaming but at this moment in time we never saw it coming. The Atari 2600 is still the King of the home video gaming wars but by that year she was getting a little long in the tooth.
It seemed like the folks at Atari had gotten pretty darn lazy because some of the arcade ports released in 1981-82 flat out sucked. Remember Pac-Man? How about Defender? I could go on without a lot of thought on the subject. Anyway, when I saw the first gaming posters for the new Swordquest series I was immediately intrigued. This game would be something that was original and new.
In 1982 I was fortunate enough to be a member the “Home Video Game Club”. For the mere sum of $2 you could rent a game from these guys take it home and keep it for a whole week! They always got posters and promotional stuff to hang up in the store and the Swordquest stuff was all over the place. Atari, was touting the series of games as the sequel to their classic title “Adventure”. I mean come on! Adventure was one of the greatest and most beloved games ever released for the Atari 2600.
If Atari is bold enough to mention this yet to be released title in the same breath with a classic like Adventure then it has to be awesome right? Not only was Atari calling Swordquest a great adventure they were also going to have a contest with solid gold prizes for those who could solve the game itself. Swordquest was to be a series of four games that included the following titles. Swordquest Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld and Airworld.
I immediately started in on my my Mom about getting the first installment Earthworld when the game came out that Fall. I do vaguely remember her trying to tell me that maybe we should just rent the game for $2 first. Remember when you spent your birthday money on that game you hated. No way! Earthworld was $27 and I was going to have it! The first place prize for the Earthworld contest was a solid gold talisman that was encrusted with all kinds of jewels.
I knew that Earthworld was going to be difficult to solve. Honestly, I was picturing a game that would play much like Raiders of the Lost Ark for the 2600. That week at school was long! My mom drove me to the game club every Friday after school and it was difficult to stay focused on my school work. We got to the game club and there it was! Brand new sitting on the shelf! Swordquest Earthworld! The box art was beautiful and it really got my imagination flowing.
The minute we got into the car I ripped the plastic off of the box and looked at the contents. The comic book that came with the game looked great and it was also tied into the games contest as well. With the Friday traffic it was a good 20-30 minute drive to the our home in Pike Road. I used this time to briefly study the instruction manual and comic book.
Swordquest Earthworld Intro Screen
One of the first things that I noticed was that the guy you controlled ran like Velma from the old Scooby-Doo cartoon series. The game had twelve rooms that looked identical except the color was different in each one. Each room had four exits that went North,South,East and West. The 12 rooms were named after the twelve symbols of the zodiac.
When you pushed the joystick button you entered another room that often had various items that you could pick up or drop from your inventory.Shorty after I started walking around a code that read 16-4 popped up on the TV screen. I reviewed the manual and remembered that the comic book was tied into the game itself.
After looking at the manual I turned to page 16 and looked at the 4th panel on that page. I read the page but it didn’t make any sense. I didn’t even know how I triggered the clue itself. I decided to just keep playing the to see what else I could find. In order to add some actual gameplay to Earthworld Atari added four action sequences to the game.
Sagittarius Spears
Two of the sequences in the Taurus and Sagittarius rooms were similar in that you had to dodge dots or lines that came from both sides and reach the top of the screen to get into the treasure room. Leo had a waterfall that looked like a rainbow and you were required to pass through several gaps in the falls to gain access to the room.
And finally we come to the awful sequence in the Aquarius rapids. This Frogger knock-off had you jumping across logs trying to reach a purple rectangular box at the top of the screen. What made this sequence so darn frustrating was that the logs would suddenly and unexpectedly disappear thus forcing you to restart all the way at the bottom. UGH!!!
Fortunately, some of the objects that you picked up in Earthworld allowed you to either skip the sequence entirely or just walk through without having to start over. My good friend Jim had also heard about this game and was eager to have a look so I went over to his house on Saturday and we played the game for several hours. I had already figured out that all you had to do to trigger the 16-4 clue was to simply walk into the Aries room.
Taurus Horns
After a while he had found several hidden words scattered throughout the comic and we felt extremely confident about that we could beat the game. For the next several weekends we logged many hours of gameplay and found nothing. We figured the answers to solve the game just had to be hidden somewhere in the comicbook. I even went to the library and did some research on the zodiac itself!
Remember, it’s 1982 and the internet is many years away. Their are also no cell phones and in my case no cable TV either. The only gaming information that you got was what you would read in magazines or what you picked up in your circle of friends. The initial word at the Home Video Game Club was that Earthworld sucked, wasn’t playable and just didn’t make any sense at all. That also appeared to be the general consensus at school. I defended Swordquest Earthworld! Yes, everybody else was crazy and they were a bunch of quitters!
After a while my buddy Jim even abandoned me and moved on. Looking back that should have been my wake-up call to quit Earthworld because he was damn near a genius. This 13 year old kid solved the Rubik’s Cube for Christ sake! Remember, no internet, no cheat books and NO taking the cube apart! He just solved it. Meanwhile, I continued to live in denial and just wouldn’t accept the fact that Atari had produced a lemon of a game.
25-6 the 3rd clue to Earthworld
I was excited again! This discovery got me a little bit of notoriety among other gamers at the game club and even with some gamers at school. I remember some kids called me a flat out liar when I told them what I had found! Today I can honestly state that I was the only person in my sphere of influence that found the 25-6 clue. I pressed on and completed moving all of the objects through all twelve rooms using this same method.
Sadly, this strategy didn’t produce any new clues for me. Did I quit? Nope! My next strategy would be to pile all of the objects into one one room and move each object through one room at a time until I went full circle with every item all the way through the zodiac. My God! Talk about a gluten for punishment. Even after coming to the realization that Earthworld wasn’t a puzzle game but a God awful process of trial and error I pressed on!
This took forever to do and I would leave the Atari turned on sometimes when I wasn’t playing so I wouldn’t have to drag all of the crap back to the last point where I left off. Still no clues to be found. I threw the joystick down in frustration and finally walked away from that nightmare! I was actually dumb enough to play Swordquest Fireworld for a short time but it was more of the same crap. I finally decided to move on and enjoy my teenage years and Swordquest slowly faded into memory.
Then in 2004 I was making a clothing donation to the local Faith Rescue Mission and decided to walk around and see what they had for sale. The store had that funky bad odor that you come to expect and you feel like you need to be hosed off after handling any of the merchandise. I stumbled across a box that had several NES and Sega Genesis games in it and as I was digging through them I discovered an Atari 2600 copy of Pac-Man.
I was surprised to see it in there and it got me wondering if folks were still dumping this old Atari stuff off on this place long after the the system was dead and buried in the gaming community. I went and tracked down the guy who I did business with earlier and asked him if the store still got donations that included Atari systems and games. Sure, got some stuff in the sorting room right now.
I asked if I could see it and he took me to the back of the store and lifted a blanket off of two boxes and my eyes lit up when I saw what was there. A 2600 system, joysticks, paddles and that crappy Star Raiders control pad. Dozens of games including many complete with their boxes. A nice stack of instruction manuals and several of those Atari game catalogs with the crummy animation. I was also shocked to see both Swordquest Earthworld and Fireworld complete with boxes! The boxes were a bit beat up but everything inside was in mint condition! I actually still owned an Atari that was in storage but I couldn’t walk away so I surrendered $20 and walked out with everything in the boxes.
Leo Waterfall
I researched the site thoroughly because it offered up some great history on the total series and I printed off the solution dusted off the Atari and fired up Earthworld. Let’s just say that I’m glad I gave up all those years ago. The 4th clue required 3 items in 3 different rooms. And it only got worse after that! By the time you found the last clue 47-5 you had to use all 15 objects in the game and they had to be placed in 9 different rooms! Impossible!
Nevertheless, thanks to the internet I finished that stinking game over 20 years after I started. The ending in Earthworld was such a downer. You picked up the Warriors Sword and that was it. It seems like Atari could have done something cool for the end of the game. What a bunch of hacks! Now, many years later when I look back at the total experience I really would love to give Atari a swift kick in the groin for taking what I thought was such a great idea and totally half-assing the game itself. How could Atari label this the sequel to Adventure!?? It was just another example of how corporate Atari rushed an inferior product out the door to make the Holiday season rush and screw the consumers in the process.
These days the name Atari is still popular with a certain sect of gaming enthusiast. Now that the Atari has been around for over 35 years vintage gaming collectors both young and old enjoy tracking down these old cartridges to add to their collection. The first two games Swordquest Earthworld and Fireworld are easy to get on EBAY. The third title Waterworld was produced in limited quantities and is one of the holy grails of vintage video game collecting. If your fortunate enough to see a complete copy of Waterworld for sale online it will cost you hundreds maybe even thousands of dollars.
The solution to Swordquest Earthworld has been posted on the internet since the late 90′s and is old news. My old obsession with Earthworld lead me to tell my story about playing the game and to also post the solution on my own website. If you played the game at all back in the early 80′s and never got any farther than the first few clues it’s worth it to go through the complete game once just so you can finally witness all of the clues with your own eyes. Thanks for humoring me by reading my sad story about Swordquest Earthworld.
Please feel free to post comments at the bottom:)
The Swordquest Earthworld Solution
The items in the Earthworld realm
Objects of Earthworld
1. Key- Allows access to the side doors
2. Rope
3. Amulet- Scrambles the rooms you enter in the zodiac into a random order
4. Lamp- Illuminates the room in the Taurus challenge
5. Cloak of Invisibility- Allows you to skip both the Taurus and Sagittarius challenges
6. Shoes of Stealth- Muffles your footsteps when running which is cool but does ABSOLUTELY nothing to aid you in the game!
7. Dagger
8. Leather Armor- Allows you to walk through the Taurus and Sagittarius rooms unscathed
9. Water
10. Food
11. Talisman of Passage- Allows you to skip the Leo Waterfall challenge and acts as a key. (A HUGE TIMESAVER!)
12. Ring
13. Necklace- Neutralizes the effects of the Amulet
14. Warrior’s Sword
15. Short Sword
16. Grappling Hook
The Zodiac of Swordquest Earthworld
1st Clue 16-4…Simply walk into the Aries room to trigger the clue
2ND Clue 8-4…Dagger in Gemini
3rd Clue 25-6…Grappling Hook in Cancer…Rope in Leo
4th Clue 13-3…Ring in Aquarius…Key in Scorpio…Necklace in Gemini
5th Clue 5-3…Short Sword in Virgo…Grappling Hook in Libra…Food in Scorpio
6th Clue 27-2…Dagger in Taurus…Shoes of Stealth in Aries…Water…Aries
7th Clue Fireworld Clue…Amulet in Gemini…Leather Armor in Aquarius…Food in Taurus…Water in Pisces
8th Clue 17-3…Cloak of Invisibility in Capricorn…Lamp in Libra…Ring in Virgo…Short Sword in Leo…Talisman of Passage in Cancer
9th Clue 37-5…Leather Armor in Aquarius…Lamp in Cancer…Necklace in Libra…Rope in Virgo…Shoes of Stealth in Virgo…Talisman of Passage in Sagittarius
10th Clue 15-4…Amulet in Scorpio…Grappling hook in Scorpio…Cloak of Invisibility in Aquarius…Key in Aries…Food in Virgo…Ring in Taurus…Short Sword in Gemini
11th Clue 47-5…Amulet in Cancer…Lamp in Cancer…Dagger in Taurus…Key in Taurus…Food in Scorpio…Rope in Scorpio…Cloak of Invisibility in Aries…Shoes of Stealth in Aquarius…Leather Armor in Libra…Ring in Libra…Grappling Hook in Libra…Necklace in Gemini…Water in Gemini…Short Sword in Capricorn…Talisman of Passage in Sagittarius
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Filed under My Video Game Memories- Can You Relate??? by on Nov 29th, 2011. Comment. 
When we reminisce about home gaming in the early 80′s the Atari 2600 has to be on the top of just about everyone’s list. Let’s face it, virtually everybody owned one of these systems back in the day. It’s pretty safe to say that many of us hold dear memories of those glorious days of video gaming in our hearts.
When th
e conversion of old school Atari gaming crops up with an average gamer certain titles like Pitfall, Space Invaders and Adventure are almost always part of the conversation. Everybody owned those games and loved them dearly.
One extremely unique line of games were produced by a company called Starpath. The Starpath Supercharger was tied to a line of some of the coolest (and best looking) games for the Atari 2600 video game system.
The Supercharger itself was a long bulky cartridge with a handle on the top. The Supercharger was inserted into the cartridge slot of the Atari 2600 gaming system.
A thin cord that was permanently attached to the Supercharger ran from the long cartridge and was plugged into the earphone jack of a standard tape cassette player.
The games themselves came loaded on standard cassette tapes and when played the data was transferred from the tape player through the Super Charger and finally to the Atari’s CPU. This technology was actually several years old and was used in the late 70′s and early 80′s as a means to load data onto old home computers.
The really neat thing about the Starpath Supercharger was the fact that it bumped up the Atari 2600′s on-board RAM by additional 6K! I realize how pitiful that sounds by today’s standards but back in 1982 you were talking about increasing the systems memory 49 times! It was a big deal and it really showed with the graphics and depth of the games that played on the Supercharger.
Many of the games made for the Supercharger had gameplay and graphics that could stand toe to toe with anything that had been brought out for the Atari up to that point. For reasons I do not understand Starpath chose to never really promote their Supercharger peripheral at the retail level. If your looking to get your hands on one it can be done but be ready to spend some coin on the games.
Due to the lack of promoti
on and because the games themselves were produced on cassette tapes they are rare and hard to find. The odds of coming across one of the games in the wilds of the Goodwill’s and thrift stores of the world are almost non-existent.
If you dead set on getting your hands on this vintage gaming gear my advice would be to head over to EBAY where the Starpath Superchargers are commonly bought and sold by collectors. Here are a list of the original games released for the Starpath Supercharger.
Communist Mutants from Space
Dragonstomper
Escape From the Mindmaster
Fireball
The Official Frogger
Killer Satellites
Party Mix
Phaser Patrol
Rabbit Transit
Suicide Mission
Survival Island
Sword of Saros
Unfortunately, I only had the pleasure of playing 3 of the games listed above. Dragonstomper, Escape from the Mindmaster and Phaser Patrol. Phaserpatrol was alot like Star Raiders but it put the Atari 2600 version to shame.
Escape from the Mindmaster was a first person puzzle game that had some pretty snazzy graphics for it’s day. Dragonstomper was probably one of my all time favorite games for the 2600. It was way ahead of it’s time and was one the best adventure games that I ever experienced.
Filed under 80's Video Gaming by on Aug 29th, 2011. 2 Comments.
Those Machines……That’s what my mother called video games in the late 70′s. I was in the first grade in 1977 and my fathers State Farm Insurance office was just around the corner from a 7-Eleven convenience store.
After school my older Brother and me would make the half mile trek from Dannelly Elementary School to my Dad’s place of business.
My Mother worked in my Fathers office as his secretary so he could save a few bucks and not have to hire a full time lady for the job.
Anyway, it was pretty boring just hanging around the office so occasionally I would pester my mom for some change so I could walk over to the 7-Eleven and get some candy.
Over time I noticed that there were always a group of older kids crowded around in the back left corner of the store. One day curiosity got the better of me and I walked back there to see what all of the excitement was about.
I had to wait for some of the older kids to move so I could squeeze in and see what exactly was going on.
I remember the game very well it was similar to the bi-plane game on Combat for the Atari 2600. The graphics however, were in black and white.
I watched with utter amazement as they moved the stick and the little planes maneuvered around the screen as they continuously fired at one another. Being only a 7 year old kid I didn’t fully grasp the total concept but I knew that I really thought this was neat.
The other game that was in the 7-eleven was Break-Out. I remember the side of the cabinet had a guy in prison stripes swinging a sledge hammer at a brick wall. I honestly believe that Break-Out was the first game that I ever put a quarter into. It’s definitely my oldest memory of doing that.
My total game lasted as long as it took for the dot to go from the top off of the bottom of the screen. I didn’t understand what to do but I know that just rolling the knob back and forth and watching that line zip back and forth blew me away!
I WAS HOOKED! At some point my jackass older Brother told my Mom that I was putting money into those games.
My parents hated video games from that point on. They never understood why I liked them so much all through my growing up years. They finally gave up and started buying home systems and even got me a Colecovision when I was 12 years old! I will save that awesome experience for another post though.
Filed under My Video Game Memories- Can You Relate??? by on Apr 6th, 2011. Comment.
Hello everybody:)
Just wanted to pass on a funny story from my childhood that my parents still bring up every so often.
Back in 1981 when I was 11 years old Donkey Kong had hit the arcades and I found myself severely addicted to this soon to be classic.
Well, I was raised in a small rural community called Pike Road which is located outside of Montgomery Alabama. I had learned that a small convenience store in a mobile home park named Hungry Henry’s actually had gotten Donkey Kong in the store.
The only problem was that the store was almost 5 miles from my house and it sat on US HWY 231 which is a very busy 4 lane road.
Do you think that stopped me from walking that distance? Not a chance! I knew I was going to get into trouble but to me it was more than a justifiable risk. Remember I lived in rural area and it wasn’t that easy to hide from Mom.
It seemed like it took forever to get to the store and the whole time I was playing Donkey Kong I knew by the time I got back home I was going to be dead meat! I really can’t remember exactly how my parents found out what I did but they did figure out the truth.
It was probably one of the last woo-pin’s I got from my old man. It was getting to the point were taking privileges away was a better punishment than the old belt. It’s funny because if my Dad tells this story he always gets the name of the game wrong and calls it Monkey Kong instead of Donkey Kong.
Filed under My Video Game Memories- Can You Relate??? by on Apr 4th, 2011. Comment.
I have a very good memory of that day. The year was 1977 I was seven years old and Eastdale Mall had just recently opened it’s doors to the public. That mall seemed so darn huge!
My Mother older Brother and I walked around the huge mall checking out the stores and I will never forget the first time that I spotted Aladdin’s Castle. My mom gave us some change and we were off to the races! I had never seen so many games in one location at the same time in my entire life!
Sadly I really don’t remember the names of any of the old video games that I played that day. There was one game that I came to love and played regularly for quite a while after that.
It was some kind of Red Baron WWI game. No computer graphics of any kind but just drawings of WWI planes scrolling from the top of the screen to the bottom. There was a silver bar that you pressed down that activated your machine guns and it had a joystick that you used to line up the pictures into the line of fire.
When you did this properly the screen turned red and you heard that classic sound of a plane spinning out of control to it’s doom. Your kills were recorded on the panel below the silver bar that had a glass cover that numbered up to 30 I believe.
When you shot down a plane a light bulb would come on behind the corresponding number for the kill. I can remember racking up 20+ kills on a regular basis and older teenage kids would watch and seemed amazed by my feat.The games cabinet also had a red light on top that blinked on and off.
As an adult I’m well over 6 feet tall but I still remember having to hunt down a stool to stand on so I could see the gaming screens. The arcade was run by an older black man who was always so nice. If I couldn’t find one of the stools to stand on he would always track one down for me.
Sometimes he would give me an extra quarter to play with too. I would hand him a $1 worth of nickels and dimes and he would give me my four quarters and then he would reach into his pocket and place another quarter into my hand.
If my Mom said she was going to the mall the first thing I would do was check under the couch cushions for loose change. My fathers Lazy-Boy recliner was always a safe bet to have .50 in nickels and dimes under it. I had an allowance of $1.50 cents a week and almost all of it was used to play arcade games with. My parents absolutely hated that I spent my money on those classic arcade games.
I hung out in that arcade from that day all the way up through my teenage years. It was a glorious place and I have many great gaming and social memories from that Aladdin’s Castle in the Eastdale Mall that’s located in Montgomery, Alabama.
Filed under My Video Game Memories- Can You Relate??? by on Apr 2nd, 2011. 2 Comments.
I am closing in on my 41st birthday and when I think back to my childhood I can flat out tell you that early on I knew that I loved video games! If your a parent and your worried about how much your kids play video games I can tell you that I turned out fine.
In fact, when I was in the 6th grade taking the Atari 2600 away from me was a pretty good way to get me more involved with my school work.
My mom eventually had to carry it to work with her because it only took me an hour to dig it out of my folks closet to play with it before they got home from work. My father was such a hoot when it came to video games. HE HATED THEM!
He just didn’t understand my passion for them! I think it really bothered him that I would rather ride to town with mom to Eastdale Mall to play games at Aladdin’s Castle then to go dove hunting with him and my older brother.
My father didn’t call it playing video games he called it mash-in buttons. When Baseball Stars for the NES came out my friends and I were hooked and played that game almost everyday for several weeks.
They would come into the house and I could here them making small talk with my parents in the den and they would finally ask where I was. My dad would always say, he’s in the game room mash-in those damn buttons! Y’all can go on in and see him. It kind of upset me mad back then but now I can’t help but to laugh about the whole thing.
I have to give my folks some credit though because even though they never played video games and didn’t understand them they really gave me some great video games gifts when I was growing up. That however, is a discussion for another day.
Filed under My Video Game Memories- Can You Relate??? by on Mar 31st, 2011. Comment.
Hello fellow classic gaming enthusiast! I realize that the title of this website is very bold and many people may totally disagree with it. Video games are definitely here to stay but to me their golden age was during the 80′s. 
When I think back to playing the games of that era it just brings back so many darned good memories. This blog site is going to be dedicated to the best of worst of video gaming in the 1980′s.
We will visit both the home and arcade to remember and pay homage to the marks left on our souls by both of these gaming avenues. I will write about many classic gaming topics from the 80′s and will share many of my personal memories with you.
I’m sure that when you read some of my stories you will be able to relate to some of them and they will amuse you as well. I may occasionally stray outside of the 80′s decade era but never by much I promise. I’m glad your all here and look forward to hearing from you:)
Filed under 80's Video Gaming by on Mar 27th, 2011. Comment.