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This week Atari teased it will be soon releasing a competitor in the home video game industry, a gaming console called Atari Box, the first hardware system from Atari in more than 20 years.  Atari has been licensing franchises, including making deals for tie-ins like the Blade Runner sequel Blade Runner 2049.  If you played the granddaddy of all video systems, the Atari 2600, then you may also remember the comic books the company introduced, Atari Force. Atari also released three comic books with the Swordquest video game series, and the stories included clues that contributed to the fun of the gameplay.  The comic books were written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, and illustrated by George Pérez and Dick Giordano.  The books not only helped guide players through the adventure, they provided information to help solve a puzzle required to win an unprecedented contest, a contest with a series of prizes offered whose total value was $150,000.  The gimmick was great–you had to buy all four tie-in games to be able to have a chance at winning: Earthworld, Airworld, Fireworld, and Waterworld.  A few of those prizes were awarded, for “The Talisman of Ultimate Truth” for the champion of Earthworld, and “The Chalice of Light” for the champion of Fireworld.  But a cataclysm of events occurred–this was 1983–including the release of the infamous E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial video game and other events that ultimately tanked Atari.  (The final prizes: a crown, philosopher’s stone, and sword, valued at $100,000, were never awarded, and are said to have reverted to the Franklin Mint and were destroyed, including the key item, “The Sword of Ultimate Sorcery,” valued at $50,000).  The prizes were the real thing, including real gold, with real gemstones.  Only the chalice is said to still exist.

Today, Dynamite Comics writers Chad Bowers and Chris Sims, and the artist known as Ghostwriter X have put together a new series called SwordQuest, which continues not the adventure found in the gameplay of the classic video game, but a re-imagined set of real world events surrounding the legendary contest that never concluded.  Check out a preview after the break below.  In 1984, Peter Case was on his way to being crowned champion of SwordQuest, set to win the last of four contests and lay claim to a golden sword worth over $50,000!  But when the game was discontinued, Peter found himself without a game to finish.  Now, over thirty years later, Peter’s stuck in the game of life, and he’s losing fast.  But when he learns that all the prizes meant for the SwordQuest contest of his youth are on display in the World Arcade Museum, he finds an unknown determination that sees him put together a team of like-minded losers for the ultimate heist job — a real-life sword quest!

Issue #1 is a great read, introducing the characters, Ghostwriter X’s cool mix of modern and retro artistry, and a glimpse at the fun ahead.  Strangely enough–and unrelated to the new series–a real person carried out his own quest in real life based on a similar contest: Twenty years after the Swordquest contest–in 2003–Peter Jackson offered screen-used props from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, as prizes for a contest called “Win the Sword of Aragorn,” a sweepstakes giving away eight items: Frodo’s Sting sword, the swords of Gandalf, Eowyn, Théoden, and Faramir, The Axe of Gimli, The Bow of Legolas, and, of course, Strider, the Sword of Aragorn.  A fan named Troika Brodsky entered but did not win.  So he instead tracked down and found the winners of four items and bought them from the winners–Frodo, Aragorn, and Eowyn’s swords, and Gimli’s axe.  Brodsky amassed the greatest, and only, private comprehensive collection from Jackson’s original trilogy.  When Brodsky decided to discontinue collecting ten years later, he sold them at an incredible auction–the best fantasy auction to date–which we covered here at borg.com.

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