King's Quest 9

King's Quest 9 would have been the ninth installment in Roberta Williams's King's Quest series. While Roberta Williams offered a few ideas for a King's Quest 9 following the release of KQ8 in 1998-1999, her version never saw development. The ninth game has been in development three times since then with three different developers, Vivendi Games, Silicon Knights, and Telltale Games between 2001 and 2013.

All three development attempts never went past announcement or concept stages nor received official titles. They were described as the next game in the "King's Quest" franchise in known released information. King's Quest 9 or Kings's Quest IX are more unofficial designation for being the next game in the franchise used by the media in regards to released information. The idea of a King's Quest 9 goes back some of the discussions with Roberta Williams after the release of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity ("King's Quest VIII").^[1]

The King's Quest: Mask of Eternity Prima's Official Strategy Guide by Rick Barba made reference to King's Quest 9 as the next title in the series if a new one was made (or at least as a description of the ninth game in the series).

King's Quest 9 (Roberta Williams/Sierra)

Following the release of King's Quest 8, King's Quest:Mask of Eternity, Roberta occasionally alluded to ideas if she was allowed to make the followup game or ideas that would influence the direction of any followup games, or ideas that were cut during the process of KQ8 that she would have liked to have introduced in the following game. Though she was generally tightlipped on the subject when it came to the next game, there are a few details. But these never evolved into anything. The game was neither started nor cancelled.^[1]

Primarily it was decided during the production of KQ8, that Graham was now too old to go on adventures, and that Alexander would be less likely to go on adventures as he now had his own concerns as king of the Green Isles. This lead to Roberta introducing a new playable character into the series (which started with Connor), which probably would have had similar impact in future games in the series had she had the chance to develop them.^[2]

Rosella was still potentially a possibility for use in future games, and she tossed out the idea that Connor might even meet the princess.^[3] This idea grew to include the idea that Rosella would possibly fall in love with Connor, or Connor would fall in love with Rosella and initiate some kind of love triangle between them and Rosella's other love interest, Edgar (KQ4/KQ7).^[4]

In addition she had ideas to add multiplayer as early as KQ8 early development, but these were cut and she hoped to introduce them into future games in the series. Some of the ideas were an MMO (massive multiplayer online) adventure game, with the ability for players to collect and swap items to help each other solve puzzles,^[5] or fight monsters together.^[6][7]

King's Quest 9 (Vivendi Games)

There was a ninth installment in development by Vivendi Games (under the Sierra branding) between 2001 and 2002. It was cancelled before going into production. The game never made it past the prototype stage. Images of two renders of the playable character were leaked to the public.^[8]

The renders show what looks like an older and bearded King Graham, wielding a giant sword, wearing full armor, and having the ability to flip in the air. Suggesting that it may have been a third-person action-adventure game, similar to the 3-d Legend of Zelda games.

This like later attempts at producing a new game, were described as the new King's Quest, and not necessarily KQ9 (though news media referred to it as King's Quest 9).

King's Quest 9 (Silicon Knights)

Silicon Knights worked on a prototype for a King's Quest game at some point before Telltale Games acquired the rights. This information was released to the public through documents on the Silicon Knights suit against Epic Games.^[9]

This also was discussed as a new King's Quest rather than specifically called KQ9.

King's Quest 9 (Telltale Games)

Telltale's take on the ninth installment of the King's Quest franchise was first announced at a press event on February 17, 2011.^[10] Telltale announced that they had entered into an agreement with Activision, the current owner of the rights to the classic Sierra On-Line adventure franchises, to create new episodic games based on those series. The first Sierra intellectual property they intended to work on was King’s Quest.^[11]

The game was to follow the format of previous Telltale Games series such as Tales of Monkey Island, as a continuation of the series with all new episodic games and multiple series.^[12][13] It was intended to preserve the back story of King's Quest, and fit into the established canon. It was intended to include the challenge and possibilities of death of the original games, but the gameplay was going to be adapted to relieve some of the frustration present in the original games.^[13]

Telltale approached Roberta Williams, the originator of the series, and one of the designers on all of the original games, to see if she was interested in working on the new one. While she declined by saying she had retired from games, she did offer the development team advice, which was "very valuable," according to developer Dave Grossman.^[14][15] In May 2012, Dan Connors confirmed that Dave Grossman was in charge of the King's Quest project, and Telltale was working on how to proceed.^[16]

The game was confirmed to be cancelled by Telltale senior vice president of publishing, Steve Allison, on April 3, 2013.^[17]

As development never went far, the game never received a title beyond the reference to the franchise name (but was referred to as King's Quest 9 in some news reports).

King's Quest 9 (Activision)

Activision holds the rights to any potential new King's Quest games. When Paul Trowe at Replay Games attempted to negotiate with Activision for King's Quest licensing, they were turned down and were told that Activision already had plans for the series; "No, we're pulling it because we’re going to do it ourselves".^[18]

Fan sequels

The media sometimes refers to the fan game The Silver Lining (video game) as King's Quest 9. However, it is an unofficial fan game. Before Phoenix Online Studios received the fan license from Vivendi Games and later Activision the fan developers called the game King's Quest IX: Every Cloak has a Silver Lining, and were given a cease and desist letter. But they were able to negotiate the game's release (in a reduced form) only if they dropped the references to King's Quest from the title.

The lack of an official sequel to previous King's Quest games has inspired a number of other sequels to KQ8 or the series as a whole, both in orchestral composition and fan fiction (including other attempts at fan games).> AGD Interactive's King's Quest retellings of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones and King's Quest III Redux foreshadow a hypothetical sequel to the King's Quest series set some thirty years after KQ1. In the series all or most of the major villains of the King's Quest games are interconnected and are working for a common cause (the plot of The Silver Lining ironically mirrors many of the same ideas). In the remakes, the villain Morgeilen (aka The Father) searches for a powerful Item, so that he could prepare for the Acension in which he would be able to regain the world destroying powers of his brother Legenimor. He was looking for the artifact throughout KQ2RTS, and ultimately found it at the end of KQ3 Redux (if certain optional puzzle solutions are completed). All the villains are working together to destabilize the world enough to give The Father the chance of conquering and remaking it. Thus the foreshadowing of an ultimate confrontation between the Kingdom of Daventry and The Father to stop his ultimate plans. However, AGDI is unlikely to make their vision of a sequel considering the difficulty of obtaining a fan license, as well as the fact that they have moved into commercial games of their own under the Himalaya Studios brand.

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