The player must also sometimes have Jennifer take up a nearby object to fight off her pursuer. Hiding is not the only way to reliably save oneself from Scissorman. Multiple endings hinge on how well the player has performed and how many characters were saved during the story. The player’s objective is to keep Jennifer safe from harm and, if possible, save her friends from violent deaths at the hands of the so-called Scissorman. Upon their arrival, Jennifer is separated from the others and is stalked by a terrifying boy with an oversized pair of scissors. In Clock Tower, players take on the role of teenage heroine Jennifer Simpson as she and three friends are adopted from an orphanage by a proxy for the wealthy Simon Barrows and housed in his sprawling Norwegian mansion. Clock Tower wears its Suspiria (1977) and Phenomena (1985) references on its sleeve. Producers expressed skepticism about his idiosyncratic vision for a cinematic horror game, but allowed him to move forward with the project anyway. Kono instead primarily drew the game’s visual language from the giallo films of Dario Argento. Hifumi Kono was tapped to design and direct Clock Tower, a survival horror game which bears little resemblance to contemporary titles being released on its native Super Famicom in 1995.
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This emphasis on the Japanese market would not change with the first entry in its flagship horror series, and would set the stage for a tangled web of localizations as the series became more popular in the late 1990s.
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The studio became famous in Japan for its Fire Pro Wrestling series (1989-2017), which served as a stepping stone for the career of noted auteur Goichi Suda with his directorial role on Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3, but few of its titles were exported for North American audiences. It produced sports titles and licensed Gundam tie-ins for other publishers prior to being rebranded as Human Entertainment in 1989. Japanese video games studio Sonata was founded in 1987 as the result of a merger between TRY Co., Ltd.
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Note that only Japan received the entire series. This graphic cleanly matches up the Japanese Clock Tower releases with their North American and European versions. Similarly, release year is Japanese by default and, where two dates are provided, the first is Japanese and the second is North American unless otherwise noted. Where both the Japanese and North American names are provided, separated by a “/”, the Japanese name will appear first.
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Kurt Kalata for Hardcore Gaming 101 – Clock Tower Retrospective.Though I will be citing my research throughout the article, I’d like to draw particular attention to a few major sources: Please consider supporting that website, as its volunteers tirelessly catalog key information and art assets for an often ephemeral medium.
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Cover art, unless otherwise noted, is from MobyGames.
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This week we’ll be ticking and tocking amidst the history of Clock Tower. Welcome back to Franchise Festival, where we explore and discuss noteworthy video game series from the last four decades.