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Clock Tower Franchise

Heimdall_Xtreme

Hermen Hulst Fanclub's #1 Member
On the reason of the Return of the Series, in its next release, let's review this cult series, which many have liked, although some games were limited budget.

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Clock Tower is a survival horror point-and-click adventure video game series created by Hifumi Kono. The series includes four games in total. The first entry, Clock Tower (1995), was developed by Human Entertainment and released on the Super Famicom in Japan. Human Entertainment developed two more entries, Clock Tower (1996) and Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within (1998), which were released on the PlayStation and localized outside Japan. The fourth and most recent title, Clock Tower 3 (2002), was co-produced by Capcom and Sunsoft for the PlayStation 2. Gameplay in the series generally involves the player hiding and escaping from enemy pursuers without any weapons to defeat them. Scissorman is a reoccurring antagonist and sometimes the sole enemy in the game.

Kono's inspiration for the first Clock Tower title came from watching Italian film director Dario Argento's horror films, especially his film Phenomena (1985). The game began as an experimental project with a low budget and small staff. It sold well enough to prompt a direct sequel which competed with Capcom's Resident Evil (1996). Developer Human Entertainment went out of business in 2000, after which Sunsoft purchased the Clock Tower intellectual property. Together with Capcom, they developed Clock Tower 3 without creator Kono's input which was a critical and commercial failure.

The Clock Tower games have received mixed reviews. They are often praised for their high levels of presentation and horror elements, but criticized for their cumbersome and archaic gameplay. The first game solidified Human Entertainment as a developer and heavily influenced the survival horror genre. Although no Clock Tower titles have been released since 2002, the series did see two spiritual successors. The first was Haunting Ground (2005) for the PlayStation 2, which was similar to Clock Tower 3. The second was NightCry (2016) for Windows, which was directed by Kono and crowdfunded through Kickstarter. A film based on the series was rumored from 2006 to 2011, but never materialized.



Personally, I have been waiting for a release in America for many years, which never came from SNES and stayed in Japan.

It was in my plans to buy the Japanese edition of SNES.

I played it on an emulator and I liked it. In a future message I will give more details of the experience with Clock tower on PS1 and Clock tower 3




A franchise very close to Terror Slasher from the films of the 80s and 90s
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
I’ve never played one.
The SNES original looks very interesting, but it’s ridiculously slow and I’m not sure it needed to be so slow to be what it is.

The series as a whole looks like those typical games that you eventually get to love, but only after enduring some egregious amounts of jank.
 

MrRibeye

Member
The villain is a midget with a giant pair of scissors.
clock_tower_port_1.jpg


He is half her size, and she can easily just grab those scissors, like stealing a toy from a naughty child.
clock-tower.jpg


It's so utterly ridiculous :messenger_tears_of_joy:, but I was genuinely frightened while playing :messenger_fearful:
 
I love this series. Hope they bring the other Clock Tower (minus The Struggle Within) games to modern consoles.

Edit: As much as I would love The Struggle Within to be remastered, there are design elements in the game that won't work for modern audiences. Unless they change that, I'm all for it.
 
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Perrott

Member
For anyone curious, I'd really recommend giving the series a go on the Vita, if you happen to own one. All the PS1 releases run perfectly via Adrenaline and the spiritual successor, NightCry, had a native Vita release.
 

kunonabi

Member
The Struggle Within has some great moments and Bates is a joy throughout but the actual progression is complete nonsense. It really would have benefited from Night Cry's hint system. The first PS game is still my favorite since it was my first one but they're all worth playing even as messy as most of them are.
 

ReyBrujo

Member
I’ve never played one.
The SNES original looks very interesting, but it’s ridiculously slow and I’m not sure it needed to be so slow to be what it is.
That's the reason I never reached far in Simon the Sorcerer.

The villain is a midget with a giant pair of scissors.
clock_tower_port_1.jpg


He is half her size, and she can easily just grab those scissors, like stealing a toy from a naughty child.
clock-tower.jpg


It's so utterly ridiculous :messenger_tears_of_joy:, but I was genuinely frightened while playing :messenger_fearful:
Just like in Atari's Halloween lol

Question, will the Switch version include touch controls? That would make the game a bit more bearable.
 
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