AIRWORLD Revisited



Airworld was programmed by Tod Frye


Rare artwork for Airworld. Note the Philosopher's Stone just under the rider's left arm

Gaming notes

The game is based on the Chinese I Ching (the "Book of Changes" - see http://www.power-press.com/Ictbl.html or http://www.ichingwisdom.com/IChingWisdom/index.html for more information). It consists of "tribars" – sets of 3 bars that can be either whole or split – and there are 64 different tribar combinations, called hexagrams. The gameplay in Airworld was based on a 64-bit game language that determined the player's speed, enemy A.I., and other factors.

The above artwork supposedly came from Brian Ballestri, who was an editor for the internal Atari company newsletter, Atari Life.

According to Tod Frye, he was only about 20 percent done with the game, but was pulled off the project to do the 2600 version of Xevious. Soon after, the entire Swordquest project was cancelled.

According to programmer John Seghers, he remembers seeing Tod Frye testing out Airworld. Apparently the room structure (layout) was also based off of the I Ching (possibly 8 rooms, each representing a different tribar?). The game screen he saw was a first-person flying perspective of your character flying over a landscape – he believes it was suppose to be Torr on the flying horse (as depicted in the above artwork).

The final comic book in the series is believed to have been either completed, or very close to it. There was once talk of DC completing the book series and releasing it as a graphic novel, but this never came to pass. Whatever artwork still exists is currently "lost" in DC Comics vaults.



Updated: 9/25/01

Swordquest Revisited main page

Earthworld Revisited

Fireworld Revisited

Waterworld Revisited

Return to main menu




This page is hosted by Get your own Free Home Page