Legend of Kyrandia:

I took a look at resource files of Westwood Studios' The Legend of Kyrandia using WestPak2, and discovered a few interesting surprises.The backgrounds of the game are CPS files, which sometimes wound up with slightly distorted palettes.



ITEMS.CPS:

This image shows all of the inventory items used in the game, as well as a few that weren't.

Here's a list of the items that (as far as I know) don't appear in the game (their names were printed in MAIN.EXE):
Lodestone
Silver Coin
Gold Ring
These may look like the fireberries in the game, but they're actually labeled as Everglowing Fireberries! What a gip...
Mushroom (looks more like a mushroom cloud to me...)
Shamrock
Fallen Star (just when you thought the game couldn't get any more fantastic...)
Egg (an item from the bird's nest?)
Leaf
Mirror
Ice Shard
Jade Key
Obsidian Key
Potion of Rainbows (was the Rainbowstone originally meant to be used to make this?)
These two flasks appear three different times on the inventory items' "sprite sheet". The first and last pairs are labeled as "Fresh Water" (which can be obtained from the spring) and "Magical Water", but the other two pairs are labeled "Salt Water" and "Mineral Water". You'd think that you could get mineral water from the mineral pool inside the entrance to Serpent's Grotto, but apparently this isn't the case (though salt water CAN be obtained -- see the section below).
Scroll (one of many)
Parchment Scrap (one of many)
Red Magestone
Orange Magestone (yes -- they're both red, despite one being called orange)
Yellow Magestone
Green Magestone
Blue-Green Magestone
Blue Magestone
Purple Magestone

A series of fireberry sprites showing many more stages in the berries' "burn cycle". It's as if the designers originally intended for the berries to remain lit for much longer.


These seem to be variants on the amethyst, the sapphire and the flute used in the final game (oddly, this flute looks much more like a flute than the instrument that appears in the game, which looks more like a set of panpipes.)

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Reactions from Brandon when some of these unused inventory items are used on him:
Salt Water: "*COUGH* *COUGH* Yuck! It's salt water!"
Almost extinguished fireberries: "Help!!" (Doing this is impossible in the actual game, since the fireberries burst into flames as soon as they change to the "almost extinguished" sprite.)
Fallen Star: "I thought this was a dead starfish."

(Many thanks to Sky Render of the Telebuny forums for making me aware of the names of the inventory items.)

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Several items which are in the game but aren't essential to completing it and are hard to come by are:
The Silver Statuette: Apparently you can get this completely useless item by using the rainbowstone on the waterfall, but I've been unable to get this to work.)
The leg of mutton: I thought this item appeared in the castle's kitchen, though I've never seen it there. Eating it results in the bone.
The flask of salt water: Use an empty flask on the Pool of Sorrows.

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FNORTH.CPS: Most of the backgrounds from the game have animations for each particular scene displayed beneath the main background (apparently hidden by the interface). Several of the forest scenes show these sprites of a woodpecker and what looks like a butterfly, as well as something scratched on a tree trunk. (There are actually several screens with unused sprites showing what looks like writing carved into trees or rock faces.)

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STUMP.CPS: This scene (where the rainbow stone can be found, hidden in the stump) shows sprites of a fairy flying by! An actual fairy in the Faeriewood!? Inconveivable! (Not to mention intriguing, since the original box cover for the game showed a tiny fairy hovering next to Brandon.)

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CHASM.CPS: The Chasm of Everfall holds a surprising secret: it's several frames of an animation of a man either carrying or being lit by a mysterious green light.



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WILLOW.CPS: The scene with the healed willow tree shows a sprite of a note with a dagger holding it in place, as well as a cracked version of the rock. (The dying willow background has two similar sprites.)

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ARCH.CPS: Judging by some of these sprites, this was the scene where the fallen star was originally supposed to appear.

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POITION.CPS: Look at the pale brown sprites beneath this scene. It looks like Zanthia was going to have a CAT -- a freaking HUGE cat as well!

I tried to animate the cat, but it's not my best work:

That dark brown rectangle behind the cat makes me think that it was originally going to be lying on that green cushion in the corner, since that rectangle lines up perfectly with a section of the bookcase behind the cushion.

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CAVE.CPS: This screen contains an animation of the cave to the Timbermist Woods thawing out after being blocked off by a wall of ice! Was Malcolm originally going to block this cave entrance as well as the one to Serpent's Grotto?

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EDGE.CPS: This screen has some sprites of a cute little bird, plus more of those strange carvings.



Here's an animation with the frames arranged to show how the bird would move in the actual game (rather than just arranging the frames in the sequence they're currently in). There's a little graphical oddity in one of the frames near the end where the bird's chest suddenly gets bigger. I decided not to correct this for the sake of consistancy.


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