I bought this prototype build from a private seller on eBay in late 2017. After asking a few questions, the seller stated that they themselves had bought it from a “gentleman in Santa Cruz, Californa, who used to be a developer”, along with a bunch of other games, including another Saturn production CD-R (I sadly have no idea what may have been on that CD-R, as I never got round to asking). The build was burned to a Sega Saturn branded CD-R (Common at the time for proto builds), with “JM CK2 #3 8.30” written on the CD, and “Clockwork Knight II Redbook” written on the cover.

The date of this build appears to be 1995.08.30 (Based on the file dates), which would make this build just over 1 month newer than JP release (1995.07.28), just under 2 months before the final PAL version release (1995.10.27) and 5/6 months before the final US version release (1996.01/02).

This seems to be a relatively complete localisation of the game, although a few differences are to be noted. It is possible that this build is the version shown in several Saturn VHS promo tapes around the same time (such as the VHS that came with the first issue of Sega Saturn Magazine UK). Just to be clear, this is not simply a conversion of the later dated PAL version, as mentioned above, the file creation dates for this builds burn are 1995.08.30, where as the final PAL version’s files have a creation date of 1995.09.08, making this build around 10 days earlier.

This appears to be a prototype build of the version of the game that was used as it’s PAL region release. An interesting difference between it and the final PAL version is that the game runs at an NTSC-U resolution of 352×224, rather than the PAL versions 352×240.

Unlike the final PAL build of the game, the options screen in this prototype build matches the NTSC-J and later NTSC-U versions. The options screen in the PAL version was redesigned[1], but this had not yet happened in this prototype build.

This prototype build also includes the “Crazy TV” boss fight at the start of the game, as is the case with the Japanese and PAL versions of Clockwork Knight 2. This is, of course, not present in the final build of the US version of the game outside of a cheat code to unlock an alternate character “Ginger”.

Another interesting thing to note is, this build contains a “credits” screen after defeating the final boss/watching the ending video, unlike the US version of the title, which simply brings you back to the title screen after counting the cards you collected in the game (Much the same as Clockwork Knight: Pepperouchau no Fukubukuro).[2]

Apart from this, not much research has been done into this prototype build of the game, so expect this section to be updated with more content in the future if more differences are eventually found!

In the section above, it was mentioned that the “Credits” screen is not present in the final build of the US version of the game, but that it was indeed present in this prototype build. This can be seen in the video below.

Below is technical information about the game.

ROM dump status

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Track list

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