KNIGHT - Very early build of Clockwork Knight

Here's a two and a half minute clip of KNIGHT which was the original name to Clockwork Knight for the Saturn. This video was taken from a preview of the game running on a CG Work Station. The file size is just under 7 Meg.

http://www.segagagadomain.com/knight-CGearly.avi

Yakumo

 

i wish that clockwork bomberman clone had shown up somewhere eventually

 

Errr, its available on the net, or were you just refering to retail?

 

I released it a while ago.

 

x

 

really? where is it =/

 

Chelsea :-(

Charlton :dance:

 

I'm pleased that Yakumo decided to share this brilliant video, but not the fact that I can't actually view .avi files on the computers at my library due to the over-excessive filtering system they use - any chance somebody could mirror the file in .zip or .rar format so that I can download it that way? For some reason their software doesn't object to direct copying of files, but sound or video (well, any media in general) results in a forced error screen. There are even some gaming sites that I can't access anymore, which is further proof of the "nanny state" I currently live in!

 

I mixed it on but it is the same as the original backing music from the original clip. I re-did the audio because the original was quite poor in quality.

@Anthaemia. - I'll send you a PM with a different rared version link.

Yakumo

 

x

 

It wasn't, believe me ! It was identical to the track I replaced it with. There were no sound effects or any differences in the song. The song is from Clockwork Knight but I'm sure you already knew that.

Yakumo

 

The song used in Clockwork Knight (actually the second game, to be exact) is slightly different, as I'd never heard the extended intro before - this video just gets more amazing! If only the Saturn version of Clockwork Knight looked half as good as that SGI tech demo, though to be fair most developers today would probably struggle emulating such visual quality as well! Did anybody viewing this for the first time back in 1995 really think Sega's console was that powerful? Even when pushed to its absolute limit, I doubt the likes of AM2 or Team Andromeda could have recreated that prototype pixel-for-pixel... and I thought Sony pioneered the concept of blatantly lying with the pre-release console specifications and software!

 

Was it possibly runing on that board sega of america looked at which ended up being the 64 after sega of japan passed on it?

 

I've never read anything more specific than it was running on a Silicon Graphics workstation, though I guess it's possible Knight was actually powered by the hardware Sega of America designed as a 32-bit solution prior to becoming the Nintendo 64 - I'd never really thought about that before!

 

Well thank God they never went with what became of the N64. The Saturn may not have polygons as sold as the N64 but at least there's never any blurry textures or fogging. Call me odd but I'd rather have clear with pop up than fogged without pop up.

Yakumo

 

Exceprt from recent sega 16 interview with tom kalinske

Sega-16: So could that have perhaps caused them to exert more authority over how things were done? The inner rivalry that existed between the American and Japanese branches of Sega is legendary, and most believe that this, rather than any hardware decision, is what caused the company to lose its focus. Would you agree? How much do you think SOJ's treatment of its U.S. branch hurt business?

Tom Kalinske: I think so. I don't know how many different instances you know about, but what basically occurred (and I'm probably going to be a little fuzzy on the timing. Joe Miller could probably help you on that one) was that we all knew that there would come a day when the Genesis would no longer have a life, and we'd have to move on to the next technology. There was of course, a big debate as how best to go about that. When we started the CD-ROM efforts, clearly those were the early days of using optical discs for video games, and it was very rudimentary (a lot of it was even done in black & white back in those days), and the combination of live-action and real program software was very difficult.

I remember Joe Miller and I were talking about this, and we had been contacted by Jim Clark, the founder of SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.), who called us up one day and said that he had just bought a company called MIPS Inc. which had been working on some things with some great R&D people, and it just so happened that they came up with a chip that they thought would be great for a video game console. We told them that in the U.S., we don't really design consoles; we do the software, but it sounded interesting and we would come over and take a look at it. We were quite impressed, and we called up Japan and told them to send over the hardware team because these guys really had something cool. So the team arrived, and the senior VP of hardware design arrived, and when they reviewed what SGI had developed, they gave no reaction whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, they basically said that it was kind of interesting, but the chip was too big (in manufacturing terms), the throw-off rate would be too high, and they had lots of little technical things that they didn't like: the audio wasn't good enough; the frame rate wasn't quite good enough, as well as some other issues.

So, the SGI guys went away and worked on these issues and then called us back up and asked that the same team be sent back over, because they had it all resolved. This time, Nakayama went with them. They reviewed the work, and there was sort of the same reaction: still not good enough.

Now, I'm not an engineer, and you kind of have to believe the people you have at the company, so we went back to our headquarters, and Nakayama said that it just wasn't good enough. We were to continue on our own way. Well, Jim Clark called me up and asked what was he supposed to do now? They had spent all that time and effort on what they thought was the perfect video game chipset, so what were they supposed to do with it? I told them that there were other companies that they should be calling, because we clearly weren't the ones for them. Needless to say, he did, and that chipset became part of the next generation of Nintendo products (N64).

So that's an example of how, partly due to our success in America, Japan just didn't want to do the things that we suggested.

source http://www.sega-16.com/Interview- Tom Kalinske.php (page 2)

Really good interview and reveals such intresting details such as sega of japan being pissed off that they werent doing as good as the american branch and other that have not been written in any books or text on sega history.

 

The only reason so many games on the N64 were blurry is due to the hardware lacking a decent amount of memory needed to store high resolution textures, but this wasn't a problem on the Saturn with its CD storage and expandable RAM, although a similar upgrade cartridge was also released for Nintendo's system later in its life. I would still have preferred something based on the System 32 or Model 2 arcade boards - in other words, the sprite-pushing powerhouse with "moderate" polygonal capabilities that Sega originally wanted the Saturn to be. However, the final specification matches this description equally as well, though I know it would have been far too expensive and unrealistic at the time to expect a 32-bit console with performance equal to anything like Model 2.

Another great regret is that despite supposedly being 1.5 times more powerful than Model 3, few conversions to Dreamcast were arcade perfect. Then again, by that point Sega had already discontinued supporting that platform in favour of the NAOMI family, which still didn't get as many home ports as it deserved. Sure, early waves of Dreamcast software were dominated by NAOMI titles, but what about the likes of Virtua Fighter 4, Monkey Ball, Initial D or Planet Harriers? As seemingly always with Sega, the company has missed plenty of great opportunities throughout the years...

 

x

 

Thats actually quite a nice video, quite a few changes I see. I dont even recall that particular level... hmm.

 

I wasn't aware that Clockwork Knight had a soundtrack disc - and to think I was going to rip all the music from the options screen myself! Does anybody know where I could find a copy of this album?