Clock Tower

I have never actually played this series of games, only watched Let's Plays on You Tube. They look like fun games, although the first two look like the best ones. It is too bad the first game was never released outside of Japan.

I like the concept of playing someone who can not fight back against their enemies aside from in a few scenes. The only other game I have played like this is Silent Hill Shattered Memories. It is a gameplay element that I think could be used in more Horror games.

I thought the first CT was pretty scary. When I first played the game, I was all alone, with my headphones on (I played the SNES game thru emulation). This just made Scissorman jumping out of the tub in the bathroom all the more scary and awesome.

The first two games are the best. "The Struggle Within" basically tries to cash in on Resident Evil, and Clock Tower 3... killed the series, literally.

There used to be a Yahoo group that roleplayed a continuance of the second game's story, but I could never keep up with it.

I only played the first one, through emulation with Aeon Genesis' translation patch. I actually found it scarier than Amnesia The Dark Descent (where you also can't fight enemies). At least, it sometimes kept me awake at night, while Amnesia didn't.

One of the creepiest things in the game is actually quite mundane: Walking through the halls. There is no music playing and the only sound are the Jennifer's steady footsteps on the wooden floor, that echo loudly through the halls. There is something really unsettling and foreboding about this.

Ugh, yes. I was surprised a Super Nintendo game could be so creepy.

And mind you, I usually laugh at horror games.

CT (SNES) is one of the most effective horror games ever made.

Whatever happened to that movie they were supposed to make?

I didn't know they were making a movie. It's probably in the dreaded Development Hell. Then again, movies based on Video Games tend to fail 9 times out of 10, so being stuck in DH is not necessarily a bad thing!

The first game is, without a doubt, scary. Rule of Scary is definitely in full force there.

1. You have Scissorman (I think Hedge Clippers Boy is a better name) chasing after you, and he uses Offscreen Teleportation quite effectively.
2. You encounter a Jabba The Hutt-like monstrosity of a baby that wants to eat you. There are some explanations about the baby that are loaded with Squick.
3. The woman who took you in turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing of the worst kind, has committed atrocities for no discernable reason, and apparently dabbles in Satanism.
4. The man of the house was locked in a cage and left to starve by his wife, and I don't think a reason was ever stated for that.
5. You have a zombie in a cabinet that uses Jump Scare quite well, and I don't think it was ever explained what it was doing there.
6. You discover your poor father dead in a padded room of the house, because he discovered how Obviously Evil those two little kids are, and the woman of the house couldn't have him blabbing it out to everyone out there. It sounds like a Contrived Coincidence, if you get past the shock and horror of it.

The first game was never released outside of Japan, for reasons that should be obvious. Although, if they had, I bet Nintendo's "kiddie" reputation would have been blown to bits right then and there!

Last I heard of the CT movie, it was going to be based on The Struggle Within. That was almost two years ago. Yeah.

I'm not holding my breath for this one. Video game and comic book movies are by far the most prone to getting in Development Hell of any movie type.

One of the more twisted things about CT was how many ways you could die. For example, the parrot that pecks you to death and the reflection in the mirror coming alive to choke you. Crazy!

...why? Who in their right mind would decide to base a film on the most despised installment of a franchise?

Uwe Boll, maybe?

Clock Tower 3 was genuinely horrible.

The SNES and PSX Original, however.