King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride
Developer: Sierra On-Line Publisher: Sierra On-Line Platforms: DOS, Mac OS Classic Released in US: November 23, 1994 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a notes page

King's Quest VII is a PC adventure game that has diverse opinions: some people call it a glitchy mess with terrible animation, while most others call this game legendary with great animations. Look at it this way: it's the precursor to Phantasmagoria.

All information on this page comes from Akril.

To do: Port the rest of the stuff over, eventually. Lots of unused music still in game data (both in demo and final build). Check one of the demos that is based on an earlier build of the game. With a room modifier cheat, lots of non-demo accessible rooms can be explored too. Lots of differences in animations, events, music, etc. Clean up this page.

Sub-Page

Notes

Partial Debug Mode

To use debug options, save an empty text file in your installation directory, then rename it "carlos.kq7". Go to the troll kitchen (room 2500) or dark forest entrance (room 3150) and press the "\" key (backslash) twice. You will see a date and time pop up over your inventory, and a debug log will begin. Debug mode is now active, even after you leave the screen.

The following rooms give you debug options when you enter:

• Underground troll bridge / bottom of elevator (2550): gives you the lantern and enchanted rope immediately, with options for shield, spike, trollzella state, troll state, and cart state
• Dark forest entrance (3150): press "/" key (divide) twice when confronting the werebear to get an especially gruesome sounding death
• Burned house (4000): in Chapter 5, gives you options for the femur, boogeyman, and speech or text
• Graveyard east (4050): get gravedigger's rat and option for speech or text, and boogeyman stops appearing

Unused Graphics

Sketches

These sketches are in the resource files distributed with the game.

Part of the altar in the pyramid.

The entire altar in the pyramid.

The arrow keyhole at the top of the colossus's head.

A boring cave wall.

Mathilde's chair in the Vulcanix Underground.

Some kind of desert sketch.

Another desert scene.

And another desert scene.

The inside of Dr. Cadaver's house in Ooga Booga.

Part of Etheria.

A scene from the Vulcanix Underground.

The Mountain of the Winds in Etheria.

Not sure what this is, it may be the corn sprouting in the desert.

The remains of the adventurer, Colin Farwalker.

The home of the kangaroo rat in the desert.

The instructions for emptying the salt water pool.

Unused Animations

The boogeyman attacking Rosella.

The boogeyman attacking Rosella again.

Rosella attacked by a tentacle without her cloak—she must have the cloak to enter the swamp.

Edgar and Valanice scene.

Another scene with Edgar and Valanice.

The dragon's tail squishing Rosella. This was used in some versions of the game, but not in all of them.

Valanice opening the outline of a door.

A scene with Oberon and Edgar.

Rosella encountering the jackalope, who is usually only met by Valanice.

Old Logos and Icons

An early version of the KQ7 Sierra logo.

Whoa, maybe VII was originally going to have a multiple-icon interface like King's Quest V and VI.

Old Versions of Images

Caves with Crystals.

The crystal caves before colour conversion.

The desert with a clone brush.

The desert clone brush forming the cliff face.

Desert with Pyramid.

The old desert with the pyramid at the right.

The stone head with different footprints and bush.

Space Quest 6 Scene?

A scene referencing SQVI.

A scene in the resource files that is rather reminiscent of Space Quest 6. However, this scene isn't used in SQ6, which came out in 1995 on a different engine. It might be something from a possible prototype.

Easter Egg

In the forest, a bear wearing pants may attack you, resulting in your death. If you hit the / key twice before the animation ends (or have a file called CARLOS.KQ7 in the root of your C drive, activating an unrelated debug mode), then the game will cut to black and repurpose sound-effects from elsewhere in the game (with some randomization for spice) to imply your character (both Rosella and Valanice are accounted for) is being eaten alive. How grizzly!

To do: Document debug features the CARLOS.KQ7 file enables

(Source: Benshoof)

Unused Audio Clips

Kangaroo Rat

Some items that the kangaroo rat would trade if only you could actually bring them to him in the game:

• Bone
• Baked Beetles
• The Moon
• Count's Medal
• Skull

The moon dialogue is particularly inexplicable, as the whole point of the item is that you can't leave Falderal until you launch it back into the sky.

Rosella and Attis

Characters who don't normally meet each other in-game:

Others

• Graham worrying about Valanice and Rosella being a bit late.
• Rosella pronouncing "Faux Shop" oddly.
• Rosella encountering the broken cart.
• Rosella talking about fixing the cart up.
• Different rat voice, talking about how he can't see.
• Slightly different part of the introduction speech.
• "Is there anything I can do?"
• Rejecting the idea of picking up another stick.
• That desert has a long name!
• Death message for the tail of the dragon squishing Rosella.

Revision Differences

King's Quest VII was released in three known versions: 1.4, 2.0, and 2.0b. Unfortunately, because of difficulties making 2.0 work properly in modern versions of Windows--it's a 16-bit executable, first and foremost--Vivendi made the decision to use 1.4 alongside DOSBOX in almost every collection release starting with 2006's King's Quest Collection and is what's available on Steam and GOG, even releases after the 2010 King's Quest Bundle which has 2.0b.

Version 1.4

Original 1994 release, for MS-DOS exclusively.

• Only allows saving when quitting the game; to reload, you need to exit the game entirely and restart it. Pushing ESC does nothing.
• The death when using the Hammer & Chisel on the crystal dragon before giving it the Spark is present.
• Movement speed is fixed, and cannot be sped up.
• Examining the Moon in the Falderal fountain before buying the Book in the Faux Shop can result in the Wooden Nickel refusing to highlight, softlocking the game.
• There is no time limit for escaping the lava near the end of the game.

Version 2.0

1997 re-release, updated to run in Windows 95, and used in nearly every collection bundle after.

• Includes a Windows interpreter as well as a DOS interpreter.
• A new bug was introduced: the timer on the lit firecracker Valanice picks up in Ooga Booga is tied to CPU speed, and as such can explode the instant it's picked up, making it extremely difficult if not impossible to get it to Count Tsepish's tomb before being killed.
• The dragon tail death is removed.
• Movement speed can be increased dramatically by pushing + on the numpad, though many events will reset the speed.
• The wooden nickel highlight glitch is fixed.
• Rosella only has a few seconds to escape the volcano before the lava swallows her.
• 

  The 2.0 Save Menu
  It is now possible to save and load at any time by pushing ESC to open a new menu. (The odd order of options is deliberate, and there's no confirmation prompt on any action.)

Version 2.0b

2010 update, only included in the King's Quest Bundle.

• Fixes the firecracker timing bug in the Windows interpreter.