Unused Material from the original King's Quests (and other Sierra games)!

[ATMachine]

Here's a screenshot of Cupid's pool at night from the back of the KQ4 box:



(On the box it was mistakenly mirrored, so I've corrected it here.)

Here's the pool at night as it looks in the original release of KQ4 SCI:



The starry night sky has been redrawn, and many of the trees are now visible in full color instead of appearing cloaked in shadow.

Also note the tree branch in the upper left corner. In the early version of the room, the branch bark was visible and the leaves were in shadow; now it's the tree limb that is shadowed, and the leaves which are visible.

In addition, look at the ground at the back of the screen; it was light green in the work-in-progress background, but now appears brown.

Here's the same pool at night in later releases of KQ4 SCI:



Because the new version overlays a night-sky backdrop directly on top of the daytime backgrounds, the whole scene is much brighter.

The small trees in the foreground are gone now, as with the daytime version of this screen, and the upper-left tree branch is now entirely in shadow. Plus, the sandy ground behind the pool is now much brighter.

[ATMachine]

Apologies for the triple post, but I'm not done yet!

Here's Cupid's pool at daytime from the AGI version of KQ4, just for comparison.


And here it is at night.


Here are more images to compare the three versions of KQ4.

In the following pictures, the upper left image is the first SCI version, the upper right one is the later SCI version, and the lower left one is the AGI version.



The Save/Load screen. Note the button colors on the two SCI versions.



The minstrel sitting on a tree stump.



Entering the troll cave. Note how different the lantern glow is in the early and later SCI versions.



The three witches' skull cave.



The ogre's house.



The haunted mansion at night. A marked difference in the SCI versions!



The waterfall at night.



The bottom of the path to Lolotte's castle at night.

In almost all cases the AGI graphics are modeled on those of the original SCI version.

[ATMachine]

Here's a bit of alternate background art from the KQ1 SCI remake.

This is how the gates of Castle Daventry originally looked:





And here's the original version of the castle's eastern bridge over the moat:


This is Castle Daventry as it appears in the final game:



In the WIP screens, the castle appears much older, more time-worn, and more vine-encrusted. Interesting that they went for a much "cleaner" look in the final game.

Also, where are the gate guards in the early pictures? Was the new introduction cutscene in place yet, or did the remake at this early stage mimic the original AGI KQ1's beginning more closely? I wish I knew.

[ATMachine]

Also check out this early screenshot of KQ5, with the game title displayed in the upper black bar:

[ATMachine]

I stumbled upon a video of Sierra's 1988 video catalog (part 1 and part 2), which advertises, among other things, KQ4.

Here are some screencaps of the early version shown in the promo, compared with the final game (the first SCI version, that is).


Here's an early version of the status bar.



In the version of KQ4 shown in the video, the narrator's text is captioned "Narrator," as with the dialogue of other characters in the game.



In the final game narrative text is not captioned in that way.









In this version of KQ4, the starting screen and closeup of Rosella with Genesta were different: Rosella started out standing at the base of a cliff.







In the actual release the cliff was removed. It disappeared from both the overall background and the close-up image.





An early pass at the haunted mansion with different, less grassy soil, seen at day and night.



The haunted mansion in its finalized appearance.





The mansion's west graveyard and the witches' skull cave at night, as they initially appeared.



The west graveyard and skull cave in the finished release. The graveyard scene was lightened considerably, and the skull cave was made to stand out more from the surrounding rock.

[Akril15]

Man, I'm having trouble keeping up with these posts!

As usual, nice finds, ATMachine. They might be better suited to your site than mine, since I try to limit my finds strictly to unused material found in the actual game files.

[ATMachine]

That's fine, Akril. I'm not asking you to post them on your site--you have your niche and I have mine! I have however been asked to add them to the King's Quest Omnipedia wiki, which I've accordingly done.

[ATMachine]

I just realized--and I'm ashamed to admit it never occurred to me before today--that Alexander's outfit in KQ6 is basically ripped off wholesale from Kevin Costner's costume in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Funny how blatant the resemblance is once you're looking for it.

[thesporkman]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

I just realized--and I'm ashamed to admit it never occurred to me before today--that Alexander's outfit in KQ6 is basically ripped off wholesale from Kevin Costner's costume in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Funny how blatant the resemblance is once you're looking for it.

Hey, wow, you're right.

That's really interesting too, since King Graham's outfit is modeled after the more traditional Robin Hood costume you see in older Robin Hood movies.

[Lambonius]

[Akril15]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

That's fine, Akril. I'm not asking you to post them on your site--you have your niche and I have mine! I have however been asked to add them to the King's Quest Omnipedia wiki, which I've accordingly done.

Great -- I'm sure they'll gain a lot more attention there.

Originally Posted by thesporkman

Hey, wow, you're right.

That's really interesting too, since King Graham's outfit is modeled after the more traditional Robin Hood costume you see in older Robin Hood movies.

Wow -- like father, like son.

[Irishmile]

I love that movie.

[wilco64256]

It's interesting to note that there are some siimilarities between the story of KQ6 and Prince of Thieves as well.

[ATMachine]

Thought I'd do a little thread necromancy here.

Remember I mentioned how I surmised (based on close scrutiny of black-and-white character portrait drawings from Behind the Developer's Shield) that the Winged Ones of KQ6 were originally going to look like living statues?

Well, today I watched KQ6ART.AVI, a movie file on the KQ6 CD which contains almost all the high-res background art from KQ6. It's a treasure trove of unused stuff, incidentally, and is really fascinating to look at. (However, I had to run it on Windows 3.1 emulated in DOSbox; the .avi file doesn't like modern media players, in which the picture tends to get glitchy.)

So, look what I found:



It's the background drawing of Lord Azure and Lady Aeriel as they originally looked--white-marble-esque, blank-eyed living statues.

[Valiento]

Hmm glad they didn't do that. It's way to much grey in the scene.

[Akril15]

Wow, that's amazing! Looks like your theory about the Winged Ones originally being statues has been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

I actually found KQ6AVI.EXE on disk 2 of the Roberta Williams Anthology. I tried opening it in Windows 3.11 (whice I also have installed), but I kept getting the error message "Disk 1 is required. Please insert disk 1 to continue." I wonder if some files required for that program to run weren't transferred from the KQ6 CD to the RWA.

EDIT: Oops -- I somehow got "KQ6AVI" confused with "KQ6ART". Sorry about that.

[Tinkerwrks]

Just remember: Don't Blink!

[ATMachine]

Originally Posted by Tinkerwrks

Just remember: Don't Blink!

Haha, yes, they do look rather Weeping Angels-esque, don't they?

[Akril15]

As long as we're on the subject (sort of): I see that you've added a lot more pictures from KQ6ART.AVI on this page of the KQ Wiki, ATMachine. They're all pretty impressive, especially this one (top-down perspective? In KQ6??) The pictures showing just a few elements of a room or scene just floating in a void filled with nothing but strokes of paint are also pretty surreal.

I thought this picture of Caliphim and Allaria was odd, not only because of the strange pictures and text framing it, but because I've already seen a variant of that picture before in one of the "behind the scenes" programs included with the KQ Collection, only that one hasn't been touched up yet (the actor playing Caliphim has brown hair, not gray). I wonder where this picture was going to be featured in the game (if it was meant to be used in the game at all).

It's interesting to see how the City of the Winged Ones was moved away from the labyrinth -- and the beach of the Isle of the Sacred Mountain isn't blocked off on both sides like it is in the final game, either. The screen with the stone archer on the Isle of the Beast has a lot more trees on the right side in the final game. I also think it's odd that the hole in the large tree at the crossroads on the Isle of the Crown wasn't in the original painting -- it doesn't serve any purpose at all in the game other than being a slight red herring.

[ATMachine]

Akril, there are loads of other changes to the backgrounds which are also quite interesting:

-The shape of the Isle of Wonder on the magic map closeup was originally less markedly a comma, and it was changed to be more obviously so for the final game.

-The main entrance door of the Castle of the Crown was touched up a bit for the finished game.

-The name of the bookshop on the Isle of the Crown was changed, but it's hard to make out the original name.

-In the closeup of the lamp seller's lamps, the merchant's costume was changed for the actual game, and the background was mirrored.

-There was an attempt to use an odd camera angle in the closeup of the spellbook. I can see why this was abandoned.

-The items on the counter in the pawn shop originally did not include the flute.

-You've mentioned how at first the Winged Ones city was clearly visible from the labyrinth entrance. But in that same background, it also looks like it might have originally been possible to walk eastward. In the final game there's a mountainous crag added to the east edge of the screen, blocking you from doing so.

-The Winged Ones Oracle is wearing a blood-red medallion, which was later recolored to be less prominent.

-The peppermint leaf cave had its entrances redrawn, possibly to look better when reduced to low-res and 256 colors.

-The original version of the catacombs floor-tile puzzle background had the camera on the opposite wall. In this early version, Alex would enter the screen from the left and cross it from left to right. In the final game, he enters from the right and crosses from right to left. (Plus, the outline of the fourth wall has a notable blue glow, which isn't present in the final version.)

-The starting screen in the Realm of the Dead has a large stone pillar in the foreground, which was later removed.

-The mystery screen in the Realm of the Dead is present here too. From its position in the video, I wonder if this was originally where Night Mare left Alexander, so that he had to advance one screen to meet Allaria and Caliphim.

-In the area in the Underworld at the bank of the River Styx, where Charon waits with his boat, originally the Styx water was full of waves, and had a purplish hue. In the final game it's a tranquil, solid black sea.

-There were originally a couple of extra doors in the Castle of the Crown hallways, one in the basement and one on the second floor. The second-floor back hallway also later had a carving of Pegasus added to the wall.

-The closeup of a paper in Alhazred's trunk, which in the final game says ZEBU, originally read SHAZA.

-There's an ornate close-up of a keyhole. I have no clue where it was to be used.

-The background of the west hall in the Castle of the Crown has the staircase banister in a different place.

-This closeup of Alhazred and "Cassima" about to be married was later modified to include the figures of Alex and Saladin.