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Clockwork Knight: Joukan - CK 3.28 US Prototype

“CK 3.28 US Prototype” is a late localization prototype of the US build of Clockwork Knight for the Sega Saturn. It was publicly released on December 9th, 2024 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Clockwork Knight’s first release in Japan.

The Basics

I bought this prototype build in late 2024 from user “Miyazaki’s Slave” on NeoGAF Forums, who originally bought it along with a Playstation Vita/Misc Game Bundle[1] from another user called “The Pleasure”[2] on the same forum. “The Pleasure” has told me that he originally bought this dev disc back around the year 2019 at a Flea Market around an hour and a half from San Francisco. The seller had 4 other Saturn dev discs (one of which was apparently Tomb Raider), and the other three were unidentifiable just by looking at them. “The Pleasure” bought just the CK 3.28 disc, as that is all they had enough money for at the time. Sadly, the seller never returned to the Flea Market after that day, so there was never another chance to pick up/potentially identify any other Saturn dev discs, which is a real shame.

It is possible that the seller at the Flea Market is the same seller who sold the CK2 8.30 US Proto to the seller I bought it from. It was noted at that time that the original owner was a “gentleman in Santa Cruz, Californa, who used to be a developer”, and the seller also bought another unidentifiable disc from the same person. This is of course all speculation!

The build was burned to a Sega Saturn branded CD-R (Common at the time for proto builds), with “CK 3.28” written on the CD, and “CK #7 3.28” written on the spine of the CD case. Nothing was written on the front/inner sleeve.

The date of this build appears to be 1995.03.28 (Based on the file dates and the game header), which would put this build at 8 days before the final US retail build (1995.04.05). This sadly appears to be a virtually complete localisation of the game, bar a few file hash differences in for the CDDA files. This is of course a bit disappointing, but that is the luck of the draw when it comes to Prototypes, especially localization prototypes… and even more so with a date so close to final!

These discs are always worth documenting!

Adknowledgements

A big thank you to my good friend “Just Mags/MagsThe3rd” (AKA Freelow) for being the middle person in aquiring this prototype, and making sure it got to me from the US to over here in the UK in one piece. I owe you more than one!

Another big thank you goes to the Sega Saturn hacking master, and someone I personally consider a friend at this point, “Bo” (AKA @memory_fallen) for looking into this build/comparing files. Your kindness/help is always appreciated!

And a final thank you goes to “Miyazaki’s Slave” for selling me the Prototype in the first place, and also to
“The Pleasure” for providing some historcial information about the source of the proto and for being the original seller!

Videos

For documentation purposes, shown below is the Title Screen from this build.

Prototype Images

Action Game
Source: CK 3.28 US Prototype - Inner Case & Disc
Action Game
Source: CK 3.28 US Prototype - Case Spine


Action Game
Source: CK 3.28 US Prototype - Front Case
Action Game
Source: CK 3.28 US Prototype - Back Case

Technical information

Below is technical information about the game.

ROM dump status

System(s) Total Size(s) Build Date(s) Source(s) Comment(s) Hash(s) Header(s)
Sega Saturn 248,027,808 1995-03-28 CD-ROM (US)[3] MK-81007 V1.002 View View

Track list

NTSC-U Ver.
1. (Data track)
2. Clockwork Knight (Opening demo 1) (00:48)
3. Clockwork Knight (Opening demo 2) (02:09)
► Running time: 2:57

References


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