King's Quest II: Romancing The Throne - Development

Development

King's Quest II resembles King's Quest I in appearance and interface. King's Quest II contains fourteen musical selections, including Tchaikovsky's love theme from Romeo and Juliet. Other songs include Greensleeves on the title screen, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in Dracula's castle, and Michael Jackson's Thriller when encountering the ghosts outside the castle entrance (only the opening bars of the last are played so Sierra wouldn't have to pay royalties for using the song). The music for the game was produced by Al Lowe, who was an accomplished jazz musician.

Limited floppy space would have restricted my design, but Sierra had been compressing the pictures by drawing them as lines and fill colors for a while. This game does not support sound cards or mice, as they did not exist at the time of publication.That scheme was kept all the way up to King's Quest V. This sequel to the original King's Quest provided not just a second look at the life of King (formerly Sir) Graham of Daventry, it also began a tradition of using King's Quest as a training ground for future designers. Future Space Quest series designers Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe joined the development team. They helped to make the game an even bigger hit than the original.

According to Roberta Williams;

King's Quest II reminded me a little of Wizard and the Princess. We saw how previous games (Mystery House and King's Quest I) were received by the public, and I was anxious to try my hand at a bigger story right away. Graham would be king by now. What quest should a lonely king go on? What should he see through the magic mirror? A maiden in distress! I started to forsee a family for Graham in the future. I couldn't fit some ideas into King's Quest I, so I was happy to get a chance to include King Neptune, Dracula, everyone from Little Red Riding Hood, and that infamous rickety old bridge you could only cross so many times.

My earlier games, from Mystery House to King's Quest II, were great games, but they couldn't have the deep complex plots I wanted due to memory and space limitations. Basically they were treasure hunts with lots of simple goals (you go from here to there) and fun puzzles to add to the challenge. King's quest III had to push things a little farther.

The story always comes first, but technology plays a big part in what you can't do.

This was the first King's Quest to include an introduction cutscene, just past the credits. It also is the first game in the series with a linear story progression. The world actually changes as the story progresses, new characters appear in the world, areas are opened up to the player, and closed off when no longer needed. For example the mermaid appears after reading the inscription on the first door, the Antique Shop opens after reading the second inscription, the Boatman appears after the third door inscription is read. It was first released in 1985 as a disk that booted on start-up but was re-released in 1987 with EGA and Hercules support to run under DOS. This is why most remaining copies bear a 1987 rather than a 1985 copyright date.

The Apple II version added improved sound over the PC version.