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.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2017-2019 (Final Round)

This was the period where both company’s arcade releases truly came to a near-close.  That this round starts in 2017 says it all.  Since 2011, neither company made a single game for arcades that wasn’t an updated version of a previous one.  As I stated last time, there were ports, mobile games and console games, but the previous round set a precedent for both companies moving forward: now the console versions of their fighting games would come first.

It’s a damn good thing Capcom followed that precedent in particular because holy shit.  The release of Street Fighter 5 can be debated for being worse than The King of Fighters 12.  Compmared to the low bar that is KOF 12, Street Fighter 5 had fewer characters, fewer features and fewer modes to play, all at the price of a full retail game.  Street Fighter 5 became the target of such mockery and ridicule that people almost forgot about KOF 12.  Almost.

As if to rub it in Street Fighter 5’s face, SNK brought out a new King of Fighters game with a massive 50 characters and a fully featured arcade mode with substantial story content.  I heard stories about Street Fighter players jumping ship to KOF 14 because of how much of a rip-off Street Fighter 5 was.  There’s footage of a pro Street Fighter player telling Capcom representatives to their faces that he was going to go play Guilty Gear instead of Street Fighter 5.  It was really REALLY bad.  It’s the stuff of legends.

That is not the version being judged though.  Capcom continually added to Street Fighter 5 with overpriced DLC until they finally got a feature-rich and complete game re-released as the Champion Edition, which is what came out in arcades.  SNK had already released KOF 14 for arcades with all its DLC included by that point, plus a little spin-off.  With the release of SNK’s 2019 Samurai Shodown game later, we’ll have reached the last arcade game released by either company.  We will finally see if Capcom will cement their lead as the best arcade game manufacturer or if SNK will tie the score.

Live and let die!  Fight!

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2012-2014

Curious things happened in the aftermath of The King of Fighters 13 and Super Street Fighter 4.  SNK wasn’t coming out with a lot of new games except mobile phone ones and ports of previous games.  There were some good mobile games and good ports, mind you.  I still love The Rhythm of Fighters and had some fun with Metal Slug Defense, which led into Metal Slug Attack and apparently Metal Slug Attack had so much of an audience that just recently they came out with a complete console version of it called Metal Slug Attack: Reloaded.  For ports, the Code Mystics ports for KOF 98 and 2002UM were made available on PC with online play, which for me was a huge deal.

On Capcom’s side… Well a lot of people consider it Capcom’s darkest time period and would lead into them becoming the evil fan-hating company they are today.  There were already a lot of contentious decisions and games like the Bionic Commando remake, Dark Void, DMC: Devil May Cry (it’s not THAT bad, guys) and of course Street Fighter X Tekken.  Street Fighter X Tekken was a disaster for Capcom because of on-disc DLC due to a deal with Sony and a gameplay customization system essentially kind of being pay to win.  I play Street Fighter X Tekken on the Vita, where all the characters are included, so I didn’t get as much withheld content and I think it’s a pretty fun crossover, but I am in the minority.

Capcom had one possible saving grace with Sengoku Basara 4, a game that was shaping up to be the end all be all for action gaming once it came out in English.  As long as Sengoku Basara 4 came out, Capcom would become immortalized as the greatest game company in the that could do no wrong.  Everything hinged on that one game as far as console games went.

Both companies were either too busy or didn’t care enough to make new arcade games after their last ones, but both of them did throw arcades a bone and released updated versions of their best, most recent fighting games.  Now we’ll decide which of the company’s best of their best is THE best.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: Bonus Round!: Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection

The Marvel vs. Capcom Collection is out and with its widespread availability, Capcom has some more ammunition under their belt.  While doing the Capcom vs. SNK series I’ve had to skip all but the last two games included in this collection, but now that I can finally play them, it’s time to fill in some gaps and maybe make it something of a review of the collection as a whole..

I had previously stated that when this collection came out I would go back and edit the included games into their respective year, but on further contemplation, that could cause a mess for consistency because there’s the possibility of these games elevating Capcom just enough to retroactively score a win for a year, which would make future posts referencing victories contradictory.  Therefore, this bonus round is going to give Capcom a few chances to reclaim a point in the competition and allow me to evaluate the 5 games I didn’t get to play before.  I will conclude each one by determining if it was good enough for Capcom to have had a better showing in its release year than SNK’s games.  In the case of years where Capcom won, all they have to do is not have the game be a disaster than brings them down.

Capcom vs. SNK: The King of Arcades: 2009 & 2010

2009 was the beginning of Capcom’s golden age.  It was when the far superior console version of Street Fighter 4 came out and got more fans into the franchise, since digital distribution of classic games wasn’t quite as available as it is now.  This gave rise to the “09ers”.  The newbies.  Capcom was hitting big.
 
It wasn’t just Street Fighter 4 either.  Capcom was also making tons of master works around this time, such as Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Devil May Cry 4 and Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, the game with the distinction of having the single greatest English dub in the history of the gaming medium and one of the cornerstones of action gaming.  Capcom was the best company in gaming at this point in time.

However, that was all on consoles.  Another arcade version of Street Fighter 4 wouldn’t come until later on, giving SNK their chance to swoop in with their flagship franchise and claim themselves as the rulers of the arcades.  Once again Capcom has to play catchup and try to beat everything SNK comes out with with just one game.  Let’s see if they do that.