Unknown version

Warrior in Town

• Version: Most likely Alpha3, but maybe also Alpha2
• The similarity with other Alpha3 town shots suggests this is a press Alpha3 shot, but it was also used by Blizzard, which is why it could also be from a different version
• Since it's not a super interesting shot (Griswold standing in a different place and slightly different town layout) it's not a huge loss to not know the origin

Warrior in Town

• Version: Unknown
• The heavy plate warrior sprite was made very late during development
• Adria was already present during the pre-release demo
• This could mean that it's either the earliest known appearance of this sprite or a mockup created by Blizzard at a later point in time, but they accidentally used a background from an earlier version

Characters in Town

• Version: probably pre-release or earlier
• The missing stone behind the tavern indicates an earlier map version. But not too early since Ogden and Griswold are already in their retail-positions
• The supposed multiplayer characters are most likely fake. The Rogue is the only character that can be the player in this shot but she's not on the tile grid. You can overlay a screenshot for proof
• That means this shot is most likely completely fake, or we're missing something

Characters in Leorics Tomb

• Version: Alpha2 or newer?
• No lighting but Rogue and Warrior in heavy armor, which doesn't match up
• Also they're in the single-player only level of the Skeleton King, which shows that Blizzard originally planned to implement more quests in multiplayer
• The Rogue is using the town-idle sprite, which of course isn't used in the dungeons
• Probably the medium armor Warrior is the only real player sprite in this shot
• There are no yellow fallen visible behind the door and if there are, there's line of sight enabled. So we assume the original shot this fake one is based on, was made after Alpha1

Warrior in Catacombs

• Version: We have no idea
• This is the one! The shot that's driving us insane because absolutely nothing matches up. Let me run you through the details
• No lighting suggests an early version
• Transparency suggests the version isn't too early
• In the north we can see one of the old dungeon boundary walls used by the old level generator used until Alpha3
• On the right, we can barely make out the new flame for the Cathedral brazier, suggesting the shot was made AFTER Alpha3, because until Alpha3 the flame sprite was different
• The heavy armor warrior sprite can be seen, which is usually fake as it mostly appears as a copy&paste in cave-level shots to make them look like multiplayer screenshots
• This shot was used by Blizzard themselves on several occasions and also appears in the french Diablo translation manual
• Right now, if the shot is real, the only explanation I can think of is a version between Alpha3 and the barely known Alpha3.5. However we need to find when the first appearance of that screenshot was
• If you have any clue about the origin of this shot, please let us know

Warrior in Cathedral

• Version: Probably pre-release or newer
• This is probably a retail shot, since it looks quite modern, but it appeared in an article from early 1997 that used only early Alpha shots, except for this one, which seems a little bit strange

Warrior in Cathedral

• Version: Probably Alpha2 but Alpha3 is also a candidate
• Obvious facts first: No lighting, old level generator, transparency: This excludes Alpha1 and anything past Alpha3. The lack of lighting makes is lean very slightly towards Alpha2
• The star of the show are the two levers that are apparently connected to the holes in the ground with fire coming out. This shot is without doubt an official screenshot by Blizzard, as it appeared shortly before the release of the game in a french magazine
• What makes this so interesting is that this kind of contraption is not used anywhere in the game, there's no sign of such a mechanism in the EXE files and this is the only screenshot from pre-alpha to retail showing this
• The holes in the ground and the flames are still in the diabdat.mpq, so it's no creation of the magazines
• Maybe this is a screenshot of an early experimentation with possible traps to be used in the dungeon. It probably looked nice, but didn't really do much, made no sense or was too difficult to implement, so the idea got scrapped, but not before this one shot got out into the public

Sorceror in Caves

• Version: Alpha1-3
• These cave shots are unfortunately very difficult because things like transparency works different in the cave levels
• We have only the lack of lighting as a rough indicator for the age of the shot, but it's not much help
• With the character casting something and wielding a staff, we can assume it's a sorceror and thus an older version, but that's far from a proof and closer to a guess
• The only aspect in the caves that we know changed is the look of the lava. There's two problems: First, this shot doesn't have lava and second, we don't know exactly when the lava changed, as we have few confirmed Alpha shots with lava

Caves

• Version: Alpha2-3 or later
• This is the problem I mentioned. We see the lava that is used in retail and we know the lava was different in Alpha1. We also have a bunch of other shots with lava, but we have no clue if the Lava changed in Alpha2,3 or later. Because the new lava shots appeared as early as August 1996, we assume that the pre_release demo already used the new lava. What we need are confirmed Alpha2 and 3 shots with lava
• This shot was heavily modified by Blizzard to give an impression of the not yet implemented multiplayer
• If we assume that they used all their available player sprites, we can narrow it down to Alpha2 or 3 because the pr-demo already had Rogue sprites.
• The screenshot is also available in a number of further modifications. The first one includes the Rogue, and a couple more enemies. The casting warrior in heavy plate was also replaced
• The second modification is actually almost identical to the first. It can be seen in a mirrored (!) version on a LOT of retail Diablo boxes and includes a photoshopped face on the warrior in the lower right

Caves

• Version: Alpha2-3 or later, same as the shot before
• This gives us a small glimpse into the workings of Blizzards promo-shot department (if there was one, probably it was just one person)
• We can see the exact same Rogue sprite and Town Portal (100% exact frames) as in the shot before. Clearly they were pasted in here
• The Warrior with the shield is also the same that's used in the fakeshot variant in the screenshot above, enemy included
• The fakeshot is basically the same, but was probably used differently and had to be smaller, so they moved elements around
• My guess is, that there is a version without the rogue and shield warrior but a casting character instead

Caves

• Version: Alpha2-3 or later, same as the shot before
• Most likely made at the same time as the previous two shots, it features all three "warrior" sprites and a bunch of enemies.

Caves

• Version: Alpha2-3 or later, same as the shot before
• Unfortunately only available in a very small version, this shot looks just like the others of the caves
• I assume if we ever find just one of these cave shots with an interface, we can give a lot of "Unknown" screenshots a new home

Caves

• Version: Alpha1-3 or later
• What's interesting is, that Blizzard didn't connect one class to one armor type. They switch around wildly in the previous shots, suggesting that the light/medium/heavy armor classes were an early feature for all classes. But we can't prove it with those shots, just assume.
• We see a lot of the same enemies in the caves shots. Maybe they were taken in the same game?
• The fakeshot lazily inserts a sorceror next to everyone else and moves the right warrior closer to the group without changing anything else

Caves

• Version: Alpha1-3 or later
• Same business as always. We only see warrior characters in different roles and Rogue/Sorceror sprites are only added later (not in this one though)
• The fakeshot makes everything a little bit smaller and sprites are moved closer together.
• The fakeshot cut off the lower warriors head...