Clock Tower Rewind Review

12 years ago I wrote a piece on the original Clock Tower in what was only the 4^th post ever on this blog, where I called it the scariest game ever made.  In a way, that makes Clock Tower kind of special to me.  Since that post I’ve played several different kinds of horror games, from the David Lynch-like Harvester to the competitive horror of Dead by Daylight and the surreal maze chase scares of Dark Deception, so I have a much broader perspective on the genre than I did back then.  I also have a confession to make that affected my view on the game: at the time of that post my fear of Clock Tower was based on my viewing of someone else playing it.  I hadn’t played it myself.  I couldn’t.

Clock Tower was released for the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom in 1995, but wasn’t released in English, which I would normally question, but in this case it makes sense.  The game heavily features a pentagram and ambiguously satanic rituals at a time when Nintendo was very averse to religious symbolism in games on their consoles.  It also had some violence.  There wasn’t much in the way of blood and gore, but this was also a time when Nintendo got up in arms about the bloodless cheese fest that was Night Trap.  I’m not even sure how Clock Tower got a Japanese release, to be honest.

Nintendo got more lax as the years went on, but even Binding of Isaac over a decade later was initially rejected for Nintendo consoles because of its religious themes.  It’s funny how now they publish the Bayonetta games and a remaster of Night Trap is available on their console.

The original Clock Tower would be rescued from Nintendo’s nanny console and got a new version on the PS1 in 1997, shortly after its direct sequel.  The PS1 version added new content and changed some of the visual and audio effects for the worse, in my opinion.

You would think now that Clock Tower was on a system that allowed for more freedom of violence and religious symbolism that it was the perfect time for an English release, but no!  They translated the sequel instead, advertised the sequel like it was the first game and skipped the actual first game entirely!

This was such a baffling move!  Clock Tower 2, as it’s known in Japan, is so obviously a sequel!  It follows the plot points of the original game, directly references the events of the original game and one of the big twists only makes sense if you played the original game!

Sure, Persona 2 did the same thing, skipping the first of its duology, Innocent Sin, and only translating the second, Eternal Punishment, but at least in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment the ambiguity of previous events was part of the plot and in the context of the characters in the game it was a mystery to be solved that the player could follow along with.  Clock Tower 2 expects the players to know the original!  The first game was right there on the same system!

The Clock Tower games would consistently be released in English since the second game, but there was never an English release of the original.  It fell on the fans to make Clock Tower available to play for English speakers with English translated ROM hacks and bootleg SNES reproduction cartridges.  The illegal way was the only way to play, but even though they worked, some of these fan translated versions had the occasiona glitch, especially for the PS1 version, from what I’ve read.  They weren’t the most ideal way to play.

Now with Clock Tower Rewind, we finally have an official English release of the original Clock Tower.  We can finally play it for real and it only took

30

YEARS!

Well, 29, but who’s counting.

Clock Tower: The Scariest Game Ever Made

On a Halloween-themed episode of the Jimquisition, Destructoid’s Jim Sterling brought up an interesting point regarding horror games, and I think he was right on the money.  However, I was somewhat disturbed that he only gave a passing mention to the game Clock Tower, because it deserves more credit than that.  Clock Tower (that’s the original SNES game, not the first one released in America on the PS1) is the scariest game I have ever seen.  It’s not like today’s games with proper controls, extensive voice acting, and fun gameplay.  After all, it’s an SNES game, but, as Jim explained, it’s the distinct lack of those features that make it so effective.  I have felt more true terror watching someone else play Clock Tower than I have felt actually playing the Resident Evil remake and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.  To summarize, these are 4 things Clock Tower has going for it that makes it so much scarier than games today.

1. Gritty graphics

Jim already covered this trait with his brief look at the Friday the 13^th game, and the same concept applies to Clock Tower.  The graphics are gritty, dark, and not pleasing to look at.  Through the game, you discover the dead bodies of all your friends who are killed in different ways.  The 16 bit SNES is able to portray them with a degree of photorealism, but the pixilation of the old images creates an unsettling and unfamiliar atmosphere that puts them somewhere on the slope down the uncanny valley.  The dead bodies you find all get close-ups that are absolutely horrifying, and I can only imagine how scary they must’ve looked to gamers back in the day the game was made.  This is the big factor in what makes the original Clock Tower scarier than its PS1 sequel, which is full of bright colors and goofy-looking polygons.  The graphics only add to the bizarre and unnatural imagery found throughout the game’s setting.

At least there weren't any plagas in this one.

2. You’re in control and defenseless

In Clock Tower, you do not play as a S.T.A.R.S. member prepared for combat situations nor a space man with badass buzz saw launchers.  You are a teenage girl with no weapons and almost no means of defense.  All your friends are dead, and there’s a creepy child with a giant pair of hedge clippers in the house that can come out at any time and cut you in half (though the game never shows that).  You can’t fight him.  All you can do is run.  Run and panic.  That and pray you don’t get cornered in a room with only one door, because then the odds of escape are even slimmer.  You can tussle with the freak and possibly knock him down temporarily or hide from him, but it’s usually not a good idea.  And unlike a slasher film, where you know the crazed murderer will be defeated somehow in the end, the heat is on in Clock Tower, because whether or not you get that ending is entirely determined by you: the player, and unless you cheat and look things up online, you don’t have any idea how it will end.  It is that tension that demonstrates the emotional potential of games as an interactive storytelling medium.

3. Silence

In games these days, we usually hear something at nearly all times.  Maybe a side character talking, zombies groaning, the echo of our own footsteps, and the sounds of lightning from the weather.  But in Clock Tower, there is next to nothing.  There are only a few sound effects, no music to distract from the isolation except for fear music when being chased (raising the tension further), and no voice acting to give the player a familiar human voice.  It is nothing but the cold sound of silence ringing in your ear along with footsteps and your character's beating heart until the scare chord plays to shock you even more than whatever it’s accompanying, breaking the silence and telling you it’s a good time to be afraid.

Regarded as one of the game's best moments.

4. Scissorman

As a playable slasher movie, Clock Tower has one of the most effective slasher villains I’ve ever seen.  The main enemy of Clock Tower is Bobby Barrows, also known as Scissorman.  He’s a strange, deformed little boy who wanders the mansion the characters moved into with a giant pair of scissors (that I might as well call hedge clippers), giving him the moniker “Scissorman.”  His schtick is pretty simple.  He can come from anywhere at any time and just walks toward you, snapping his scissors together the entire time.  You’d think that since he merely walks, you can outrun him, but he moves surprisingly fast, and it’s not helped by the main character not being very athletic herself.  To make matters worse, it’s possible to trip while running, no doubt leading to players shouting obscenities while their heart races and the sound of scissors comes ever closer.

Much of this montage demonstrates just what I mean by "anywhere".  He more or less teleports!

Even further adding to fear is the fact that Scissorman is actually a small child, activating some kind of primal fear we have about children not having a proper conscience.

I think I know why the front yard looks so neat.

All of this contributes to why Clock Tower is the scariest game I have ever seen.  Even the great horror titles of the last generation haven’t matched its horrific brilliance and subtleties.  With any luck, the game will receive a Virtual Console release, and underwear manufacturers will profit from it.