Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams’ portrait in King’s Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: ‘I never noticed it before.’

Ever had that feeling that something’s been staring you in the face for years and you simply never realised? Like the fact that Simon Pegg is in Band of Brothers. Or the fact that Andrew Scott is also in Band of Brothers. In fact, I get this feeling pretty much every time I rewatch Band of Brothers, because it’s stuffed to bursting with young actors who went on to become massive stars.

Anyway, a similar flash of recognition recently happened to adventure game streamer Mike Piontek, who discovered an interesting fact about the Sierra classic King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella that was staring him in the face twice at the same time. And it’s all to do with a picture of the game’s designer Roberta Williams. Two pictures, in fact.

Williams is stamped all over King’s Quest IV. I’m not referring to her design philosophy here, although that’s very much true too given she wrote and designed it. I mean she literally appears in and around the game in multiple instances. Not only is there a picture of her on the rear of the game’s box art, she also crops up in the game itself.

When you either finish the game or die trying (since it’s King’s Quest, the latter is far more likely) a text box appears in which Williams thanks you for playing, then lightly chastises you for failing (if you did) with the phrase ‘Next time… be more careful!’. To the side of this text box is an image of Williams rendered in glorious 8-bit colours.

What Piontek noticed is that they are the same image, or at least, the in-game image is a digitised version of the box portrait. “I never noticed it before, but this author photo, from the back of the King’s Quest IV box, is absolutely the reference image for the portrait of Roberta Williams that appears in the game.”

The key giveaway, as Piontek notes, is Roberta’s woollen sweater, which is white with a distinctive pattern of black squares flanked by chevrons above and below. This, combined with her expression and the angle of her pose, makes it abundantly clear that it derives from the author photo.

One question remains: why? The likely reason is simple pragmatism. Why use a different image when the simple act of converting the original into 8-bit graphics will substantially change the look of it anyway? That said, I like to believe it’s because Sierra wanted to induce a subliminal sense of paranoia in players, that Roberta was watching them try and fail over and over from every corner of the game.

What’s almost as fascinating here is the mere concept of a game having an author’s photo. It’d be almost impossible to do that for most games today. Not only are PC games almost entirely digital these days, but they’re also made by teams of hundreds. You do get a few personalities that stand out, however, such as Kojima or Hidetaka Miyazaki.

The latter would work particularly well with Piontek’s final assertion ” PS We really gotta bring back game devs telling you to get better at the game when you die”. Imagine seeing Miyazaki’s disappointed face every time you got battered by Melania in Elden Ring.