WaterWorld Contest Followup

Russ Perry received letters from the independant judging agency following the WaterWorld competition. Here, in HTML format, are the final words he received regarding the fate of the Swordquest Contest. There was no mention of Certificates of Merit being awarded. I'm assuming the great videogame crash of 1984 had something to do with it.

May 14, 1984

Dear Mr. Perry:

As the independent judging agency for the ATARI SWORDQUEST CHALLENGE Program, we are delighted to inform you that your entry in the "WaterWorld" Contest has been officially graded and found to contain all four correct "word-clue" answers. In fact, your entry was one of the total 45 submissions received in this contest segment which supplied the four right words.

Because the number of contestants who provided the four correct "word clues" exceeds 10 (as stipulated in the Official Rules ... please see photocopy attached), we are proceeding to the contest tie-breaker procedure described in Rule #5. This letter represents your personal invitation and only notification of participation eligibility in the Waterworld tie-breaker contest. No other correspondence or telephone exchange may be entered into, and no responsibility can be assumed for lost, misdirected or late mail.

Therefore, we direct your attention to the "statement-completion form" which accompanies this letter, calling for your own response to the starter-line "What I like about the Atari WaterWorld video adventure game is...". Your reply may be written long-hand or printed (clearly in ink) or typed on the form provided, and should not exceed in length the lined-spaces indicated on this one-sided sheet.

Your statement-completion form should be sent via first class mail to the address indicated thereon and must be postmarked no later than June 15, 1984. All on-time tie-breaker entries will be held, unopened, until the first week of July when each shall be individually judged "on the basis of originality, sincerity and aptness of thought". The decisions of the judges shall be final. All entries become the property of Atari, Inc. and cannot be returned.

Winner notification shall be effected no later than August 1, 1984; subsequent to such notification, personnel from Atari shall be in contact with the tie-breaker winners conserning timing and travel arrangements for the play-off trip to California.. leading to the WaterWorld Crown which is to be awarded as this contest segment's Grand Prize.

Congratulations on having reached this advanced stage of the WaterWorld segment of the ATARI SWORDQUEST CHALLENGE!

Sincerly, James R. Amrein, President

Amrein Marketing Associates, Ltd.,

45 Weston Road, Westport, CT 06880, USA (203) 226-2836

August 7, 1985

Dear Mr. Perry:

Atari was sold to new owners last Summer and, with the attendant changes in personnel and future plans, we literally found ourselves at a point where there was such a program as the SWORDQUEST CONTEST.

Not only did this situaltion take a while to correct, but then the lawyers had to resolve who was now responsible for the contest prizes (the new owners or the old owners).

A very conscientious and industrious attorney for Atari has the matter in hand now and wants to resolve this matter in the very near future.

I wish there was more we could tell you now, but our firm's role was simply to judge the entries. Prize payments are the sponsor's responsibility, and we found ourselves mid-stream in judging without a sponsor if you will.

Thank you for your patience ... it's not been forgotten and is nearing resolution, and you'll hear from Atari on this sometime shortly.

Sincerly, James R. Amrein, President

Amrein Marketing Associates, Ltd.

May 30, 1986

Dear Mr. Perry:

As you may know, Atari, Inc. sometime ago disposed of its computer and video game business, with the result that the SWORDQUEST promotion, originally conceived almost four years ago, no longer has value. A plan for resolution of the SWORDQUEST Contest has been reached with the firm which bought out Atari, Inc.

Our agency served the original program as its independent judging agency, and we regret to inform you that your statement-completion entry in the "WaterWorld" tie-breaker was not one of the winning submissions.

Thank you for your patience and your participation.

Sincerely, James R. Amrein, President

Amrein Marketing Associates, Ltd.

Thanks to Russ Perry Jr. for supplying the correspondence.

HTML code for this document was created on October 22nd, 1997 by Lafe Travis

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