Note: This essay was first published in the autumn of 2018 in the Letters from Thanator zine that is part of S. T. Joshi’s Esoteric Order of Dagon APA. This essay has been updated with corrections to spelling, word usage, and various clarifications.
A Game Called Quest is author S. J. Larsson’s third book, after 2016’s Megalodon: Apex Predator and 2017’s Total Immersion. Published with Severed Press, (as with his other two titles), A Game Called Quest concerns brother and sister Donny and Amanda, joined by friend Kevin, as they play a video game on the Atari 2600 entitled Quest which seemingly has VR capabilities that puts them into a fantasy world called Quintarria. The novella itself has issues: misspellings pop up more frequent than they should and Larsson doesn’t appear to be up to task to convey the story at an appropriate pace and consistent fashion. Despite these shortcomings, A Game Called Quest is noteworthy for its attempt at blending retro-modernism in the form of 80s nostalgia that has surfaced in the past decade along with the neo-peplum/sword and sorcery genre. The ongoing wave of 80s nostalgia is mostly preoccupied with the era’s horror aspect, (as evident in the Netflix series Stranger Things), and Miami Vice-esque aesthetics and for the most part eschews the sword and sorcery element that were popular during the decade. A Game Called Quest’s intersection of 80s retro-ism and sword and sorcery is its strongest facet and deserves exploration.
This short-form article will first provide a plot summation of A Game Called Quest followed by an attempt to unearth both the 80s retro-modernism and sword and sorcery elements in the story. Next, additional contextualization will be pointed out between the text and the real world, specifically regarding the usage of Pac-Man and how A Game Called Quest relates to other early console fantasy games, some that flirt with ARG (alternate reality game)-elements, akin to Quest’s VR immersion.
A Game Called Quest centers on Donny, a fourteen year old freshman trying to purchase a copy of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 on launch day, but is thwarted by class bullies Brian, Duff, and Ernie. His punk-rock sister Amanda takes him and Kevin, a not-quite-a-friend of Donny’s, to purchase something else to cheer them up. They wind up in a mysterious trinket store where the eccentric proprietor, Royee, rents them an Atari game he created himself: Quest. The three take the game, along with its various peripherals, back home and play it. They are plunged into a fantasy world called Quintarria, with Donny assuming the role of a wizard and party leader, Amanda an elf archer, and Kevin a dwarf warrior. The three set off to save the kingdom, leveling up by killing monsters and bosses while gaining new skills and abilities in the process. At the same time, they also combat the real world bullies who intrude on them. The novella ends with the trio beating the VRgame, besting the bullies, and returning Quest to Royee, whose shop mysteriously disappears.
The 80s was perhaps the last gilded age of the sword and sorcery genre until the Lord of the Rings trilogy attempted to revive it twenty years later. The decade prior saw the cumulation of literary sword and sorcery, with folks like Lin Carter who edited many fantasy anthologies that gave visibility to both new talent and older, obscure works. The 80s saw the genre transcend the literary world and into other mediums, particularly in the cinematic realm. Examples include film adaptations of Robert E. Howard’s Conan such as Conan the Barbarian (1982, John Milius) and Conan the Destroyer (1984, Richard Fleischer), esoteric fare such as Hundra (1983, Matt Cimber), animated endeavors like Fire and Ice (1983, Ralph Bakshi) and even Italian derivatives such as Ator, The Fighting Eagle (1982, Joe D’Amato) and Conquest (1983, Lucio Fulci). The genre was also explored in video games, such as Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II, Legendary Axe and Golden Axe, and tabletop games as with Dungeons and Dragons.
Despite the popularity of the genre, sword and sorcery elements are greatly lacking representation in the current 80s nostalgia trend. Outrun, the aesthetics that dominate 80s retro-ism and so named after the Sega arcade game of the same name, concentrates on components such as neon-magenta colours, vector gridlines, VHS tracking artifacts and faux VHS boxart, a setting sun broken by clouds, fast cars and palm trees. Synthwave, the music genre heavily inspired by the 80s, focuses mostly on horror elements (especially John Carpenter films and his music), as well police elements such as those in To Live and Die in L.A. (1985, William Friedkin), and cyberpunk and 8-bit/16-bit video game aesthetics. Movies and television shows such as Stranger Things, Kung Fury (2015, David Sandberg), Turbo Kid (2015, Francois Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell), and so on, also focus on these facets of the 80s. Stranger Things comes close to tackling the sword and sorcery genre during this time period, with the children in the show playing Dungeons and Dragons in season one and the arcade game Dragon’s Lair in season two. However, depictions of Frank Frazetta-styled barbarians and ruggedly harsh but fantastic worlds are absent in the present day trend of retro-modernism. Most sword and sorcery depictions appear in shows such as Game of Thrones, but even that series has its own identity and does not rely on 80s homage. The Fox television show Son of Zorn is perhaps the closest example of sword and sorcery done in a retro-modern fashion. Son of Zorn was a live action sitcom with a cartoonish He-Man inspired character named Zorn inserted into the “real world” à la Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Robert Zemeckis) and Cool World (1992, Ralph Bakshi). The show was not a success and was cancelled after its first season.
Therefore, while the greater outrun, synthwave, and retro-modernism movements are concerned with exploring the horror, retro-tech, cyberpunk and Miami Vice elements of the 80s, A Game Called Quest differentiates itself within 80s revivalism by centering itself at the crossroads of retro-gaming and the sword and sorcery genre while borrowing heavily from other popular and cult 80s stories. To begin with, A Game Called Quest shares much in common with The NeverEnding Story (1984, Wolfgang Petersen): both involve bullies harassing a young protagonist and a sequence in which the youth visits a store and procures an item (a book in The NeverEnding Story and a video game in A Game Called Quest) that transports them to a fantasy world full of magic and populated by fantastic beasts and denizens. There are also shades of Labyrinth (1986, Jim Hensen) and Tron (1982, Steven Lisberger) present in A Game Called Quest as well, with both films involving heroes going to another world, with Tron complimenting the video game aspect and Labyrinth the fantasy aspect. Though made in the early 90s, it should be pointed out that A Game Called Quest’s plot anticipates Full Moon Entertainment’s Arcade (1993, Albert Pyun) in which teenagers are transported into a virtual video game world.
Regarding the 80s sword and sorcery elements, attention should first be directed to the novella’s cover. The artwork is a stock piece of art called “Dwarf Knight on Winter Cold” by Vuk Kostic1 that depicts a heavily armored dwarf in a forest during a winter’s night. The placement of the artwork against a solid red background and the typeface of the title has the cover replicate the box art of an old Atari video game. Though the dwarf isn’t quite in the Frazetta or Boris Vallejo style, it still evokes 80s fantasy elements. The story proper, of course, is submerged in video game sword and sorcery, with a party of adventurers fighting dragons, dark elves, snow imps, trolls, chimeras, and more. While the sword and sandal and the sword and sorcery genres share some overlap, A Game Called Quest contains elements of the neo-peplum genre, having been written post-1990, and by playfully making use of the genre tropes in a unique fashion.2 Basically, a contemporary-written book that leverages the sword and sorcery genre but via an 80s retro-gaming framework.
There is some fortuitous irony in that Donny is able to get Quest over Pac-Man. Various times through the story, Donny or Kevin exclaim how Quest is the greatest game ever.3 This is in stark contrast to the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man that Donny had been pining for. This was the first home console port of Pac-Man, though it differs wildly in quality to the superior arcade version. Though initially a best seller, the port’s poor quality eventually had a negative impact to both Atari (who had manufactured an excessive number of cartridges)4 and the overall image of the video game industry. These would be elements that led into the video game crash of 1983.5
Poor reception of Pac-Man aside, there is a greater link between Pac-Man, Quest and fantasy games as they appeared on early consoles. The 2600 port of Pac-Man was programmed by Tod R. Frye who would go on to program the Swordquestseries of games for the 2600. Swordquest consisted of three games, Earthworld, Fireworld, and Waterworld with a fourth release, Airworld, being unreleased (though a version would appear on the Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration compilation released in late 2022). The Swordquest games were not RPG games but instead adventure-puzzlers. Taking place in a fantasy world, players would move between rooms, dropping off items and solving puzzles. The innovative feature of the Swordquest games, much like Quest, is the ARG/metagame aspect of it: accomplishments in the game could impact the real world. In Swordquest, clues are unveiled within the game and crossed referenced in an accompanying comic book. Solving these puzzles would offer the player opportunities to win real world treasures created by the Franklin Mint: the Talisman of Penultimate Truth from Earthworld, the Chalice of Light from Fireworld, the Crown of Life from Waterworld, the Philosopher’s Stone from Airworld and ultimately the Sword of Ultimate Sorcery. The series was ultimately cancelled after the limited release of Waterworld and Atari was purchased by Tramel Technology.6 It is quite uncanny that Quest attempts to blend a video game with the real world in its narrative while the Swordquest series was, in every practical sense, actually able to perform this feat.
A Game Called Quest is not the best written work as Larsson doesn’t posses either the technical writing or storytelling acumen to truly accomplish what they set out to do. However, the fragments that do exist, the intersection of 80s nostalgia and the sword and sorcery genre via retro-gaming, is a stand out, well executed aspect of the novella. It’s definitely aninteresting take on the sword and sorcery genre as well as a refreshing nostalgia piece that attempts to work with specific80s tropes that are not as popular as others.
Endnotes
- “Dwarf Night on a Winter Cold,” Shutterstock, accessed July 19, 2018. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/dwarf-knight-on-winter-cold-537957022.
- A few of the tenants of neo-pepla is that while it is applicable mostly to the sword and sandal stories, it has a universality that is can be applied to stories with shades of sword and sandal and encourages different styles (especially post-modern) of storytelling as well. The genre is also not restricted to films, but instead is a true transmedia genre thatcan be found in television, video games, comic books, music, literature, and other media as well. Nicholas Diak, introduction to The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs since the 1990s, ed. Nicholas Diak (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017), 6-14
- S. J. Larsson, A Game Called Quest (Hobart, Tasmania: Severed Press, 2018), 18, 130.
- Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon and Beyond – The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 236.
- Ibid., 239.
- Eric Grundhauser, “The Quest for the Real-Life Treasures of Atari’s Swordquest,” Atlas Obscura, last modified March 8, 2016. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-quest-for-the-reallife-treasures-of-ataris-swordquest.
Bibliography
Diak, Nicholas. Introduction to The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs since the 1990s, 4-19. Edited by Nicholas Diak. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017.
“Dwarf Night on a Winter Cold.” Shutterstock. Accessed July 19, 2018. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/dwarf-knight-on-winter-cold-537957022.
Grundhauser, Eric. “The Quest for the Real-Life Treasures of Atari’s Swordquest.” Atlas Obscura. Last modified March 8, 2016. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-quest-for-the-reallife-treasures-of-ataris-swordquest.
Kent, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon and Beyond – The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001.
Larsson, S. J. A Game Called Quest. Hobart, Tasmania: Severed Press, 2018.