Has anyone seen these screenshots Before?

[MushyMarker8529]

Have you seen these images from Age of Empires II - The Age of Kings back in 1999?.

These were taken before the final release of the Game, its not a Mod.
If you want to see the full story of these images, follow this link
https://aok.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=3,44591,,30

[AgeEdu]

The screenshots seems taken from the June '99 edition of Gameland magazine. The complete magazine is Archvied

[JjForcebreaker]

Not these specifically, but there was an unknown number of alpha and beta builds of the game, or however were they called at the time. And at least one of them was leaked, released, or re-discovered not that long ago.
It’s fun to go back and see the gradual process of Age of Kings shedding its Age of Empires I skin and becoming its own thing.

[AgeOfAwesomenes]

Yeah I believe age of noob had a video about the age of Kings build above. And then another version a little before it was released

[MushyMarker8529]

Here are more screenshots taken from an earlier period on 1998 from Gamestar Magazine

[AgeOfAwesomenes]

That’s the one I’m thinking of. Actually kinda like that the trebs and castles were bigger. But it still felt kinda like aoe 1, had the same music in the video. Didn’t have the nice bright sunny look like aoe 2 did on release.

[StandardOfUr]

Cool images. We should definitely make an archive of all beta images that are available. I know there are some for AoE1 also somewhere.

[TommoChocolate]

Thanks for posting these! I particularly like this one:

@MushyMarker8529

Cannon Galleons with placeholder graphics that say “Cannon” on them… but the game flips the frames when units are facing in certain directions, so they all say “Cannon” backwards!

I have screenshots from several pre-release versions of the game on my PC at home – I’ll post some when I get a chance.

[TommoChocolate]

I’ve tried to put these roughly in chronological order, but I don’t know where they all came from.

Some really old shots:

Imperial Age Town Centres used to be really tall:

Castles were enormous in early alpha versions:

I think that’s a Watch Tower in the top-right:

Pretty sure these chunky towers are Bombard Towers, though obviously one of them went on to become the Accursed Tower/Tower of Flies:

Persians’ unique unit was originally “Multipurpose Cavalry”. Also some Lance Cavalry in this shot:

Town Centres were 3-by-3 but Mills were 4-by-4!:

Castles became more fortified in Imperal Age:

Some building graphics that didn’t make it to the final release; a Market on the right, and University on the left.

Monasteries were going to have different graphics in different ages, and presumably were available in Feudal Age:

Not sure what this was going to be – possibly Teutons/Goths Imperial Age Monastery:

Joan of Arc campaign, from a later alpha version:

This shot looks almost like the final release, except for the Market on the right:

The Franks’ Wonder seems to have started off being for Teutons:

I like these shallows more than the ones we ended up with in AoK: