Game #85: Quest For Power

Quest For Power was developed and published by Crystalware. The game was written by Marc Benioff who was 15 and still in high school at the time. Epyx would later publish his games (more on this later) and by 16, Benioff was earning royalties of $1,500 a month, enough to pay for his college. Marc is also the second cousin of David Benioff who was the television showrunner and writer of Game of Thrones. Marc would later go on to become the founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce and has an estimated net worth of 9.53 billion, making him the 266th wealthiest person in the world. Quest For Power; oh the irony…

In Quest For Power you play the role of Sir Galahad and you have been summoned to appear before King Arthur.

Quest For Power is more of an arcade game than it is a role-playing game. It has RPG elements but it barely qualifies as a role-playing game. There are nine key locations in the game: The Caves of Somerset, Hastings Mountain, Sunderland, Essex, The Castle of Skenfrith, The Black Forest, The Eagle Stone, Canterbury and lastly Camelot.

Camelot marks both the beginning and end of your quest to find the Scroll of Truth. There are other magical items to find within the game as well. Anselm’s Staff, Solomon’s Ring, and Moses’ Rod are three powerful instruments of magic sought out by all magicians. There is also the Key of Essex which will grant you entrance to, wait for it, the city of Essex. Lastly there is the fabled Ark of Power known to contain the most powerful magic known to man.

I have to admit, as I write this, this all sounds terribly enticing. I was preparing myself for the game by reading through the documentation and it definitely had captured my interest. It seemed to have all of the trappings for an entertaining experience.

This is probably the appropriate time to digress from a specific look at Quest For Power and talk about CrystalWare and it’s offerings. Below you’ll find a copy of the Crystalware catalog from 1982.

This period of computer gaming was given the moniker the “dark age” by Matt Barton and rightfully so. Crystalware was founded by John and Patty Bell and each of their offerings seemed highly original at the time. They would always advertise their game as a mystery that needed to be solved and they offered a cash prize to anyone who could solve the mystery. John Bell must have been quite a character because the literature printed with each game or the ad associated with each game exudes excitement. Each game may offer a unique setting and the documentation comes off as highly original but the games, in my experience, never live up to the hype. I have largely avoided the Crystalware titles to this point because of emulation problems but if we’re being honest I have always found their gameplay to be sorely lacking. I realize however that this blog is not meant to be arbitrary in it’s selection process and now that I have sufficiently gained a level of experience in emulation mastery I will be sure to backtrack and cover any titles I’ve missed.

Let’s return to our regularly scheduled programming…

I played Quest For Power on an Atari emulator and the game took me about 45 minutes to complete – and that’s being generous. To be fair however, this game was published in 1981 and many commercial games sold during that period had game lengths meant to be completed in one sitting – one to two hours. The commercial definition of game length would change as the years rolled on.

There is combat in the game which involves a set of random rolls flashing on your screen at the bottom. You press a key to get the rolling numbers to stop and each combatant deals 1-9 damage to each other. Every other round each combatant gets to add 10 to the amount of damage they inflict. It’s as simple as that. You’ll encounter the Black Wizard, Gogmagog (in the Black Forest) and you’ll have to fight the Devil in Skenfrith Castle as well as the Dragon on Hastings Mountain.

There are random gold chests scattered throughout the multiple screen locations and accruing gold will allow you to buy a few items that you’ll need to win the game. You’ll need to purchase the lamp to light your way through the caves and you’ll need to purchase a boat in order to cross a body of water.

Once you have the three artifacts in hand and have pummeled the Black Wizard, Devil, and Dragon you can then make your way past Oberion and into Cantebury where you will discover the Ark of Power. If you try to open the Ark without the three powerful artifacts in your possession it will melt your face off. If you have the three artifacts in your possession then you will discover that Merlin hid the Scroll of Truth inside the Ark of Power. Once you have the Scroll of Truth you can then return to Camelot.

The main mission here is to play all of the CRPGs ever made and that’s what I aim to do. I’m not sure that I’d recommend this game unless you’re on a similar quest as myself. I do appreciate the originality and writing that went into the documentation that came with the game. The locations, items, and adversaries come off as extremely interesting. One interesting fact is that Marc Benioff’s titles (Crystalware’s catalog would get bought up when it folded) that he programmed for Crystalware were later bought and repackaged by Epyx under their label. Quest For Power would be renamed King Arthur’s Heir and the game would stay exactly the same.