This Week In Retro: Clock Tower (1995) (Patreon)

September 14, 1995: Introducing the Original Scissor Sisters

by Diamond Feit

Sometimes one piece of media impacts the general populace so hard, we forget about the many antecedents that existed earlier. Google was far from the first search engine to consolidate the web-browsing experience. Pixar broke new ground in the field of computer animation making Toy Story but only after years of producing shorter, simpler projects. Nintendo and Atari helped to define the video game console as we know it today but both companies learned lessons by looking at older hardware.

Of Capcom's Resident Evil, we can definitively say it gave birth to the "survival horror" genre because those two words appear in a loading screen and the term stuck. Yet the concepts behind Resident Evil date back many years with Tokuro Fujiwara's spooky 8-bit RPG Sweet Home inspiring him to take another stab at making a scary video game. Widening our parameters, we must acknowledge that the zombies populating the Spencer Mansion date back even further to George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.

This means that even though Resident Evil introduced me to the idea of a video game built around frightening players and threatening them with death around every blind corner, plenty of video games prior to 1996 did exactly that. Some of these titles held direct influence over Capcom's development staff, such as 1992's Alone in the Dark with its polygonal characters viewed from bespoke camera angles. Others have a far murkier legacy: did Shinji Mikami or any members of his team even own a 3DO in order to experience the fully-3D nightmare of Doctor Hauzer?

Horror games even managed to sneak onto platforms we do not associate with violence and gore such as Nintendo's Famicom and Super Famicom. Granted, the tight content restrictions imposed by the company's US division did not apply to the Japanese market, but those consoles still had a family friendly image in their home country. It's right there in the name: Family Computer

30 years ago this week, a darker than usual piece of software made its debut on the Super Famicom. The name on the box didn't suggest much, but those who played Clock Tower definitely got their nerves rattled.

Clock Tower, like so many terrifying tales, begins at an orphanage. Four teenage girls—Jennifer, Ann, Lotte, and Laura—live there together under the care of a Ms. Mary. One fateful day in September, the girls learn that a wealthy man named Mr. Barrows has agreed to adopt them all, summoning them to his estate in Northern Europe. Ms. Mary takes them to meet their new guardian in his mansion which the locals call Clock Tower on account of its distinctive spire.

Ms. Mary and her charges let themselves in and find an empty foyer; the lights are on but no one shows up to greet them. The girls sit and wait, admiring their new surroundings, while Ms. Mary heads off to find their host and make proper introductions. At this point, none of the girls have met or even seen Mr. Barrows, although Ms. Mary expresses her utmost confidence that the girls will delight in this change of scenery.

When the girls feel Ms. Mary has been gone for a bit too long, Jennifer volunteers to seek her out. She takes just a few steps down the hall when she hears a shriek coming from the foyer where she left all her friends. Racing back, she discovers the foyer now completely abandoned and someone's turned out the lights. On that note, Mother Nature has done the same as all the windows in the house have turned pitch black. With Mr. Barrows, Ms. Mary, and all the other girls now absent, Jennifer has no choice but to start searching for signs of life. She's afraid because she thinks she's alone but unfortunately for her, she's not.

While players get to control Jennifer once she sets foot inside the Barrows mansion, Clock Tower truly begins when she stands in an unfamiliar house with nary a familiar face in sight. Where she goes, which doors she opens, whether or not she starts pocketing random items lies entirely in the player's hands. Only one thing is certain: Jennifer will soon encounter a diminutive fellow carrying a large pair of shears and he has no interest in starting a conversation.

Getting a glimpse at Clock Tower in motion or spotting screenshots in a magazine might convince an uninformed viewer that it plays like a 2D action platformer, especially given how many games of that type appeared on consoles of that era. Yet Clock Tower plays closer to classic point-and-click adventure games of the 90s than Super Mario Bros. despite not supporting the Super Famicom mouse. Boot the game up the first time and press left on the D-pad and instead of moving Jennifer, you'll nudge a small cursor to the west.

Using the D-pad and face buttons, players can direct Jennifer to move, examine objects, talk to people, and gather items that might prove useful. Pressing the shoulder buttons can also command Jennifer to move left or right, a welcome shortcut when fleeing from danger as stopping to click on a doorknob would prove too risky. Jennifer walks by default but double-clicking on a destination will urge her to quicken her pace.

Clock Tower eschews traditional HUD elements such as a lifebar, relying on a single portrait of Jennifer in the corner of the screen to convey her general status. A blue background indicates nothing's amiss at the moment, but as dangers befall her and she grows weary, the color gradually shifts to yellow and then red. This meter does not reflect damage taken but her state of mind; sitting down and resting can restore her back to full blue but it takes time.

Speaking of danger, Clock Tower has a dedicated command called the Panic Button. Whenever Jennifer is in immediate peril, mashing the B button can give her an extra boost to survive just a bit longer. In these situations her in-game portrait flashes an array of colors, and if she succeeds she'll need some rest before trying again.

We've covered moving, talking, and panicked button mashing, but what about fighting back? What instruments of death does Jennifer obtain and how many hits will put down her scissor-wielding nemesis for good? The answer is zero because Clock Tower doesn't do combat. Jennifer is a child, not a cop nor a soldier, so she's not about to find the Barrows' family shotgun and start blasting. Instead, your goal as a player is to evade hazards as you explore the house in order to locate any other survivors, secure an escape route, and possibly find out why there's a pint-sized stab-happy fiend creeping around the mansion in the first place.

Developer Human Entertainment marketed Clock Tower as the third installment in their Panic Software trilogy, following Septentrion (released abroad as SOS) and The Firemen. While those 1994 Super Famicom releases certainly mustered up plenty of menace, they're hardly horror-themed. If anything, the developer emphasized Clock Tower's movie-ness to potential customers, declaring the game represented the first of a new genre they dubbed Cinematic Live.

On that front, we must acknowledge that Clock Tower borrows heavily from Dario Argento's 1985 horror film Phenomena, also known as Creepers in the United States. Clock Tower director Hifumi Kōno* describes it as an "homage" on his current company website but that's underselling things. Both the game and the film take place in fancy European buildings populated with a bevy of teens, star a girl named Jennifer, and threaten her with a freaky killer half her size. Phenomena even opens the story with a scissor-murder, albeit one with the regular-sized variety.

Clock Tower's Jennifer also bears an unmistakable—and surely unauthorized—resemblance to 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly who stars in Phenomena and went on to headline a myriad of advertising campaigns in Japan. Connelly also recorded multiple pop singles in Japanese so by the time Clock Tower debuted in 1995, she held more cultural cachet in Japan than she did in the United States (sorry Rocketeer fans, that movie bombed at the box office).

One major difference between Clock Tower and any film is that the player gets to determine how Jennifer's story ends. The game has nine potential conclusions, not counting any Dead Ends Jennifer might meet after making a fatal mistake during her investigation. While no path exists for Jennifer to leave the mansion with all her compatriots, uncovering information about the Barrows family history and rescuing even one friend brings her closer to a happy finale.

With this in mind, Human Entertainment designed Clock Tower for players to relive Jennifer's nightmare again and again. The cartridge uses a battery backup to save each ending found, incentivizing replay to see every potential outcome. There's also a Continue feature that lets you resume play from moments before your last choice, offering you a head start on a subsequent run. I managed to get Jennifer to a garage where she found a key to a waiting car and drove it to safety—the worst ending—and I was eager to try again without re-gathering all the items in her pockets.

Unlike Human's first two Panic Software games, Clock Tower never appeared on the Super Nintendo outside of Japan. I suspect the prospect of localizing a violent 16-bit game with 2D graphics and a built-in battery with newer consoles already on the market struck the bean-counters as a no-go. Untranslated ports for the original PlayStation and WonderSwan, along with multiple sequels, transformed Clock Tower from a one-off into a full series—no doubt inspired by Resident Evil's success.

If you're saying to yourself "hey I remember seeing Clock Tower for PlayStation on a store shelf in Babbage's in 1997" you're both right and wrong. Human developed Clock Tower 2 for the PlayStation and that game did see a global release, but since the first game remained exclusive to Japan, the English version dropped the numeral. A third game was similarly retitled Clock Tower II abroad. Somehow a fourth game ended up launching in all territories as Clock Tower 3, but a poor financial reception snipped the series' life short.

As a longtime Resident Evil fan I had heard of Clock Tower for years but as a huge scaredy cat I refused to engage with any video game about running away from a persistent enemy. Of course, the lack of any official English version didn't help matters; each subsequent Japanese re-release refreshed my curiosity for Clock Tower but my fear of stalkers and playing a game in my second language continued to hold me back.

Like a little man carrying scissors larger than his torso bursting out of a bathtub, news of Clock Tower Rewind came as a shock in 2024. A collaborative effort of multiple publishers and US studio WayForward dragged the game into the limelight, releasing it on consoles and Steam with mutli-language support. Finally out of excuses, I immediately ordered a physical copy which sat under my desk unopened until this 30th anniversary approached and I removed the shrink wrap.

Playing Clock Tower after decades of clinging to my preconceptions, the actual game defied expectations. The point-and-click interface and Jennifer's trudging, deliberate gait bear no resemblance to the gun-toting zombie-slaying action seen in famous survival horror titles. The pacing, the music, and the judicious use of silence—entire minutes can pass with no sound other than Jennifer's footsteps—all contribute to give Clock Tower an impeccable atmosphere.

When I talk about Clock Tower's debt to Dario Argento or Resident Evil's debt to Infogrames or George Romero, I do so not to belittle anyone for cherishing their favs and remixing them into something new. Jennifer Connelly or her attorneys might disagree but I have zero objections to Hifumi Kōno* tracing an actor's famous face and making her the star of his very own horror game.

In the annals of art history, much like commenting on the internet, no one cares if you shout "First!!" Rather, when you learn what inspired a filmmaker or developer, that's an invitation to seek out and broaden your own horizons. I never watched any Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci movies until I found out how their pictures lit a fire in the bellies of so many other people. Likewise, if you spent 30 years unaware of Clock Tower, now's your chance. Just don't come crying to me if you develop a sudden phobia of European dwellings or the scissors in your junk drawer.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.

*his family name has also been spelled Kono, Kohno and Kouno in various English publications