A goldmine for Saturn/32X prototype enthusiasts surfaces...

Allie

Allie

The Original VF3 Fangirl™
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Who'd like to see the mythical "3D Shooting Game" (Panzer Dragoon) prototype in motion, an early playable build of Clockwork Knight, Keiji Okayasu's original Daytona USA tech demo running on a stock Saturn at 480p60, the Tokyo Toy Show 1994 version of Virtua Fighter, a look at the making of Virtua Racing, countless 32X games at various states of development and much more? Here you go:



I'm hoping that a higher quality source for this footage will eventually turn up, but there's plenty to keep fans of such material happy for a while...
 
Do you remember years ago I talked about this video, especially the Daytona car driving on the mode 7 like floor! This is the exact video I had but mine was in perfect quality. I wonder if that video originated from mine because I did make copies back in the day.
 
Ah, so this is that video? Now you mention it, perhaps the poor quality is because of this being several generations removed from the original tape? I remember you describing the prototype footage of Shinobi X and Robotica, but what threw me off is the Daytona USA sequence being the earlier high res tech demo rather than the early playable build of 777 Speedway with an untextured mountain at the last corner, which can be found with brief in another preview reel from around the same period. I really do hope that someone out there has a better source for all of this...

P.S. Can anyone identify the game starting at roughly 10:30? I once thought this might be an even earlier tech demo for Panzer Dragoon than the "3D Shooting Game" sequence, only that's shown at 0:45, suggesting these are two different projects. Considering what follows, I'm now fairly sure this was a separate title intended for the 32X. Maybe it was cancelled for being too similar to Panzer Dragoon?
 
Even if the quality isn't there this is still a very interesting watch. Thanks for sharing!
 
Allie said:
Ah, so this is that video? Now you mention it, perhaps the poor quality is because of this being several generations removed from the original tape? I remember you describing the prototype footage of Shinobi X and Robotica, but what threw me off is the Daytona USA sequence being the earlier high res tech demo rather than the early playable build of 777 Speedway with an untextured mountain at the last corner, which can be found with brief in another preview reel from around the same period. I really do hope that someone out there has a better source for all of this...

P.S. Can anyone identify the game starting at roughly 10:30? I once thought this might be an even earlier tech demo for Panzer Dragoon than the "3D Shooting Game" sequence, only that's shown at 0:45, suggesting these are two different projects. Considering what follows, I'm now fairly sure this was a separate title intended for the 32X. Maybe it was cancelled for being too similar to Panzer Dragoon?
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I had a few different videos. One also shows debug version of magical Knight Ray earth with no sound.
 
Allie said:
Who'd like to see the mythical "3D Shooting Game" (Panzer Dragoon) prototype in motion, an early playable build of Clockwork Knight, Keiji Okayasu's original Daytona USA tech demo running on a stock Saturn at 480p60, the Tokyo Toy Show 1994 version of Virtua Fighter, a look at the making of Virtua Racing, countless 32X games at various states of development and much more? Here you go:



I'm hoping that a higher quality source for this footage will eventually turn up, but there's plenty to keep fans of such material happy for a while...
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Holy fuck, kiss kiss~ <3

There is literal more footage here of "Action Game" (Clockwork Knight) at the start (Around 0:58) which was previously lost to time, first seen at Winter CES in January 1994. A lot of it's what we saw before, but even the scene where he throws the chair to block the train is zoomed out compared to what we previously saw, not to mention all the better colours compared to what we got in "The Birth of Pepperouchau" video hidden in Fukubukuro/Clockwork Knight 2 USA (Starts around 1:58):



Then we get a version of Clockwork Knight with a never seen before HUD at 6:36, and then on top of that, we get footage of the attract screens from the Tokyo Toy Show '94 prototype of the game at 29:06?!

Some of which can be seen in this video:


There are just so many differences to note with this one, some I've seen before in Magazine screens and a very select amount I've seen in other video footage, but this is such a rare treat. It's just such a shame about the quality and that the VHS seems to have issues keeping colour on screen, so it ends up black and white.

Another interesting thing here is that the music playing over the attract screens was actually later used in Clockwork Knight Fukubukuro/Clockwork Knight 2 USA for the screen where you select videos to watch known as "The Movies". Seemingly this was originally the title screen music for the game!



This song would later on also be turned into a fully fledged song known as "Salsa de Pepperouchau -Fiesta de los Amigos-", which was used in the salsa inspired music video intro to the second game.





This makes it the second time prototype footage has been unearthed of Clockwork Knight containing music that would later end up being used for the second game instead (at 1:07 in the following video, a song plays that would later go on to be used in the first Horse riding level of Clockwork Knight 2):





I hope a better quality version pops up at some point, and even more footage of "action game", but I am just so overall happy to finally see some of this stuff that was talked about for years. <3

And thus ends my weekly Clockwork Knight prototype info rant.
 
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Love the new Clockwork Knight stuff. Feels even more like a historical artifact seeing it in black and white lol. Digging the early Tempo stuff, too. You can see the BG effect with the dancing ants used to be much more fluid and they'd walk straight out of the screen, whereas the final they just bounce in place.

I hope the higher quality version of the tape surfaces someday, as well as anything else Yakumo had. How did these end up lost again anyway?
 
Bramsworth said:
Love the new Clockwork Knight stuff. Feels even more like a historical artifact seeing it in black and white lol. Digging the early Tempo stuff, too. You can see the BG effect with the dancing ants used to be much more fluid and they'd walk straight out of the screen, whereas the final they just bounce in place.

I hope the higher quality version of the tape surfaces someday, as well as anything else Yakumo had. How did these end up lost again anyway?
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Mine are somewhere in my parents house back in the UK.
 
I have waited many years to witness that Daytona USA footage that Yakumo has talked about in the past. Mighty impressive, although are we sure that this is Saturn footage? I have difficulty believing that it could pull this off at such a high res, although I haven't had much time to analyze the video.

Many thanks for this!
 
The footage of Daytona USA shown from 1:38-1:53 and 4:52-5:08 is sourced from the original Model 2 arcade version (note the rounded HUD elements in the top-left corner that are exclusive to this particular build), while the earliest Saturn code begins at 26:51 - considering that it's just a 3D car model on top of a scrolling bitmap plane by this point, I can't see any reason why it couldn't run at 480p60 as described.

Oh, and this is almost certainly NOT the same video the UK's official Sega Magazine used for all those screenshots of the 3D Shooting Game prototype. That publication ended up printing a few shots that don't match any of the clips used in this video, and I remember once reading that a longer presentation reel for this was on a loop at the Winter '94 CES along with more from the Clockwork Knight tech demo.
 
Allie said:
Oh, and this is almost certainly NOT the same video the UK's official Sega Magazine used for all those screenshots of the 3D Shooting Game prototype. That publication ended up printing a few shots that don't match any of the clips used in this video, and I remember once reading that a longer presentation reel for this was on a loop at the Winter '94 CES along with more from the Clockwork Knight tech demo.
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Right, and they didn't end up printing them until several months after the event happened.

As far as I can tell, these shots actually first appeared in the 1994.03 and 1994.04 issues of Japan's "Beep! MegaDrive" Magazine (These magazines were actually street dated 1994.02 and 1994.03, respectively).

They were also circulated to other magazines in Japan around the same time, and some were shared outside of Japan (such as UK Official Sega Magazine UK 4 - April 1994) , but "Beep MagaDrive" appears to be the very first one to have them.

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As far as I can tell, SEGA simply sent shots of the presentation to magazines for them to report on the event after the fact.

And yes, as far as I'm aware, there was a much longer version of the CK footage on loop at Winter CES 94. Luckily, most (if not all) of the footage was included in the bonus video I posted earlier, albeit with a lower framerate and a difference in colour.

On a fun note, as we all by now know, a tiny part of the "Action Game" footage (along with some Virtua Soccer/Victory Goal footage from the same era) was actually kept in the US launch VHS "It's Here/It's Out There", despite the Saturn already being out for half a year by that point, and it even has the same different colour usage as this promo tape does compared to the bonus video previously shown... strange stuff!

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speedyink said:
I think you need to visit your poor parents, they've missed you!









;)
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Hehe, I did two years back and spent a whole day going through old VHS tapes looking for footage of Saturn betas. Found some stuff such as Gran Chaser, Van Battle (released as Battle Monsters) and others but not the Daytona stuff. I have a feeling I may have lent that tape out.
 
Yakumo said:
Hehe, I did two years back and spent a whole day going through old VHS tapes looking for footage of Saturn betas. Found some stuff such as Gran Chaser, Van Battle (released as Battle Monsters) and others but not the Daytona stuff. I have a feeling I may have lent that tape out.
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Ahh, well at least you tried. Have you digitized the other stuff you found?
 
For some reason it says "Video unavailable" if I try to play the video in the embedded player, but if I go to the Youtube page it loads fine.
 
Tongara said:
not to mention all the better colours compared to what we got in "The Birth of Pepperouchau" video hidden in Fukubukuro/Clockwork Knight 2 USA
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I once read somewhere about how Saturn developers were advised - perhaps directly by Sega - to raise the contrast and saturation of their videos above normal levels before compressing these into the Cinepak format as a way of reducing such colour loss, though I seem to recall CK2 using the generally better quality TrueMotion codec, so I'm not sure what happened with that particular file... Maybe it wasn't sourced from the original tech demo footage, but instead whatever copy was at hand?
 
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