Our journey of discovery starts here with a simple review page from the VERY early internet (March 1996!). An early USA based gaming website known as “Game Zero” had a review section known as “Final Word” ran by a small “team” (team-0), and one of their reviews for the Sega Saturn was for the second Clockwork Knight release in the US.

All in all, apart from being (probably) one of the earliest reviews of the game online, the review is pretty bog standard, and mainly talks favourably of the game… it really seems like nothing special at first, until suddenly the following caught my eye:

In Sega's Clockwork Knight 2 for the Saturn you return as Pepperachou, the
wind-up toy knight. In this sequal, the Clockwork Fairy Princess is still
unconcious and has been kidnapped again. You must set out (at times, with the
help of your trusty steed), to find her, while facing all new challenges.
This new installment not only contains an all new adventure, it also features
the entirety of the first game hidden as a special bonus.

…Excuse me?! Let’s look at that again…

This new installment not only contains an all new adventure, it also features
the entirety of the first game hidden as a special bonus.

What do you MEAN the first game is hidden inside as a special bonus?! How did we miss THAT?!

Then, on the same page, E.Phoenix (Evan Morris) also added the following in his own review:

Sega claims that there is a code in Clockwork Knight 2 that allows you to
play a full game of Clockwork Knight. This one is a (sometimes etremely
hard) winner.

You’ll have to bare with me on this one, as there is a lot to explain before I can really get to the point I’m trying to make…

Back in the mid 80’s, all the way up until the mid 2000’s, a company called “Video Pipeline” existed in the USA. Their main objective was providing video and media stores with “Trailer VHS Tapes” that would contain the latest footage and trailers of new products that Video Pipelines store would have for sale, with each title on the video being able to be chosen by said video/media stores. Everything from movies to CD-Rom’s to Video games, etc, could be chosen. Said video/media stores could then display such VHS Tapes on TV’s in store to entice customers into buying these latest products and releases… if you ever went into such stores in the 90’s (Blockbuster, for example), then you’ll know exactly what this was like.

Footage for these was usually given to Video Pipeline from said companies themselves, although sometimes it was custom made by Video Pipeline, seemingly. In the case of the video that we will be discussing in a little bit, the footage was likely provided by Sega Of America directly given what is written in the video description. As an interesting side note, footage from “Electronics Boutique’s Sega Saturn “Spring Fling” Promotional VHS” was seemingly built up from Trailers provided by “Video Pipeline”.

Anyway, sometime in 1997, they put their service online. Other websites could then pay a monthly subscription fee to Video Pipeline for the MB of data used to display trailers for movies they were selling on their own websites. In the same year, Video Pipeline opened a new service on their site called “Video Detective”, which would allow companies AND stores to easily search up trailers for their websites in the case of stores, and allow customers to easily build lists of movies and games they want after watching trailers, which they could then print off as a list and take it to their local video/media store.

At sometime in 2003, there was some form of litigation between Video Pipeline, Inc. and Buena Vista Home Entertainment, which can be read about at https://goo.gl/zpcGtG and https://goo.gl/fZafVs. Then on March 1st 2004, Video Pipeline decided to shut up shop and wound down, thanking their customers for 18 years of loyalty and service (which can be seen at https://goo.gl/zsrGrC). Right as they wound down in 2004, they were kind enough to provide their entire collection to archive.org, with 11 years worth of video game trailer content (1993-2004), some of which had never been availible to the general public previously. Please see https://archive.org/details/videogameprev&tab=about for more information on this wonderful collection!

The company then seemingly changed focus to a public movie and game trailer site, and changed all of their branding to “Video Detective”, which is now marked as “Founded in 2004” on their Facebook “About” page, which is the same year as Video Pipeline shutting down (which can be seen at https://goo.gl/uKPHau). A little detective work shows that despite the address change, the company is based in pretty much the same area of New Jersey, USA, and a few key people from the Video Pipeline era are still working at the business.

NOW, after all of that information, let’s finally get to the point… the following trailer (which I first found in March 2018) can be found on the Youtube Channel for “Video Detective”, and does not match up to the trailer for Clockwork Knight 2 found on the Internet Archive (witch matches up 1:1 to the footage seen in “Electronics Boutique’s Sega Saturn “Spring Fling” Promotional VHS” that was previously mentioned).

This footage features a generic SEGA logo on a black background at the start (like all of the other uploads from the same era on the channel), shows a random clip from the “Salsa de Pepperouchau” music video (which is only an unlockable in the US version of the game), an almost full showing of the into cutscene, and then… the Title Screen from the Japanese version of the game. But, the most interesting part of this video doesn’t come from the footage itself, but from the video description.

It seems that when they switched focus as a company, they made sure to retain all of the media descriptions that initially went along with the footage of games and movies they were given at the time by SEGA and others, and even kept such descriptions up when they put all of their content onto Youtube. Clockwork Knight 2 is of course no exception, and interestingly enough points to something unexpected:

Right there, in black and white, as clear as day… “If you know the code, the entire first game is included”!

So, now we’re starting to get somewhere, but at this point it’s 2019 so it feels a bit useless to email the comapny and ask if they know the cheat code to something they likely just wrote based on what apparently SEGA themselves had told them… but, my journey doesn’t end there!

So, where to we go from here then? Well, the best place to look for gaming information from this era is the Gaming Magazines. And after a lot of research, I managed to find exactly 2 instances of the cheat being mentioned in print form!

First we have US Magazine “Game Informer #35” which released in March 1996. This appears to be the first ever instance of this cheat code being mentioned by the press. The comment is sadly brief, but as shown below, it outright states that Sega had managed to “fit the entire first game on the disc”, but a “special code” is required to access it.

It is possible that this issue of “Game Informer” is where “Game Zero” got their information about the cheat code.

Second we have US Magazine “Game Players #83” which released in April 1996. This mention of the 1st game is super beief, with just the words “the complete original Clockwork Knight hidden on the disc” as shown below.

This was actually the first of the two instances I found, and appears to be the most well known.

I have looked at countless magazines, and I have never been able to find another instance where this cheat code was talked about, much less any where the cheat code was given to players… and believe me, I looked through many MANY magazines. And so, with no other leads, we had no choice but to move onto other platforms to look for info…

So, you might think that all leads are pretty dead after that… well, not quite!

Google just happened to archive the absolutely ancient rec.games.video.sega Usenet newsgroup, and so we get to see people talking about Clockwork Knight, Sega Saturn and SEGA in general from that era… a few of those posts just so happened to ask about the very subject of this page.

The first known instance was the following post by “DonnaKel” on 1996.02.20, where the following question was asked:

From: donn...@aol.com (DonnaKel)
Subject: Clockwork 2 Hidden Game?
Date: 1996/02/20
Message-ID: <4gcsj3$ple@newsbf02.news.aol.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 140300955
sender: ro...@newsbf02.news.aol.com
organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
reply-to: donn...@aol.com (DonnaKel)
newsgroups: rec.games.video.sega

I've heard rumors that Clockwork KiKnight 1 is hidden somewhere within the
newly-released Clockwork Knight 2.  Any confirmation on this?

The only suggestion to this was that perhaps they were thinking of the double pack released exclusively in Japan (Fukubukuro), but the OP was adamant that what they had heard was that the first Clockwork Knight was on the disc for Clockwork Knight 2, but they were not sure if it was to be accessed by completing the game on “Hard” (we know this isn’t the case), or if it was accessible only by entering a cheat code.

After this in the following 2 and a half years, there were 4 other posts in the same newsgroup asking pretty much the same question, unfortunately yet again with no answers. All of these, including the first and it’s replies viewable in our Usenet archive section.

For good measure, the question was also asked just once in rec.games.video.sega-saturn by “Vermontt” on 1997.02.08:

From: ... (Vermontt)
Subject: Q: Is CK1 in CK2
Date: 1997/02/08
Message-ID: <...>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: ...
sender: ...
organization: ...
reply-to: ... (Vermontt)
newsgroups: rec.games.video.sega-saturn

Hi guys.
I have a question for you who have played Clockwork Knight 2 and know its
secrets. Is the original game + cinemas inside it? I heard rumors pertaining to
this a while ago and I don't know if its true. Anyway, thanks for your time.

Sadly, this again lead to no responses, leaving the trail pretty much dead. As such, we’ll have to look elsewhere…

.

https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?threads/sega-official-strategy-guides.39112/#post-955491

https://web.archive.org/web/19980629041507/http://www.sega.com/store/

81036 14 Saturn $6.00 Clockwork Knight 2
81007 11 Saturn $6.00 Clockwork Knight

.

Just when I thought we might never find this code, something huge happened…

.

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