This new and exciting find was made aware to me (Kimmie) from a Sierra Club member named Gennie. She was looking for the alternative box cover for King's Quest 4. You are probably saying to yourself, "What? What alternative box cover?!" If you own an original copy of this game, then you will know that the box cover is of Rosella on a white unicorn with white-faced winged goons chasing after her. Until Gennie joined the Sierra Club, I was only aware of this box cover, which is shown on the main page of King's Quest 4 at this website.

Back in 1988, Sierra had made another box cover for the game, prior to the Rosella cover. It is of Lolotte pulling on the talisman around Genesta's neck. In the background is Lolotte's castle. Gennie swears that she had seen this game with this alternative box cover on the shelves of a local Electronics Boutique when she was seven years old. I decided to do some research into this extremely rare and mysterious box cover.

The employees at Dynamix, a sister company of Sierra, told me that this box cover appeared in the 1988 Sierra Game Catalog. However, they did not have a copy of this catalog lying around. The Pre-Press Department at the Sierra main headquarters, which keeps archives of box shots and other marketing materials, sadly did have any record of the Lolotte-Genesta box cover, only the Rosella one. Roberta Williams probably took the original drawings with her, which seems understandable and very fitting. Who else should have that cover except the designer goddess herself, eh? *grin* Everyone who worked at Sierra and Dynamix told me that this box cover never actually got printed to actual boxes for marketing. The AGI and SCI versions of King's Quest 4 are both with the Rosella box. (My AGI version of the game indeed is in a Rosella box.)

I had one piece of information -- the catalog, so I scoured various places and asked several more people. I came in contact with a very avid Sierra game collector. I'm talking avid since he has over 100 Sierra games in their original boxes and actually owned a complete boxed game of Adventures in Serenia -- less than 10 are rumored to be in existence. It was sold for over $800!! Anyway, he told me some interesting facts. Being one of the gamers who bought a copy of King's Quest 4 the day it was released and being one of the first people to win a Sierra contest for finishing it, the game he got was with that AGI version in the Rosella box. Therefore, it seems that Sierra had opted to go with a second box cover, the Rosella one, and marketed all the King's Quest 4 games with that box cover.

This Sierra game collector told me he remembered that Lolotte-Genesta box cover as a poster in one of the issues of Sierra's now-canceled magazine. Whether this is true or not is still in speculation because I had asked another long-time Sierra game collector, and he says that while he does remember a poster of King's Quest 4 in an issue of a Sierra magazine, it was the Rosella cover. I took a hunch and asked Sierra if they had an archive of back-issues to see if such a poster existed. The word back was that in the first color issue of the magazine, there was a King's Quest 4 poster, but it was the Rosella one...

And, so the mysterious history behind this box cover still has some loose ends. If you have any more information pertaining to this rare box cover, please contact Kimmie. By now, I'm sure you are wondering what the heck this box looks like? After intense searching and asking around, I've managed to acquire a copy of the Sierra Summer 1988 Games Catalog, which has the Lolotte-Genesta box cover shown three times! It was seen some of the later 1987 catalogs as well.

Multiple box covers are not unknown to Sierra, of course. A good number of the games have been marketed in different boxes, and those who only have one box design probably had several drafts of box covers before finally using one for the final release.