Clock Tower: Rewind, an updated version of the 1995 survival horror classic Clock Tower, will release on October 29 for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC, marking the first official release of the game outside of Japan.
The share of video game characters that haunted my dreams as a kid is equal parts the zombie in the back of the police car from the original Resident Evil 2 and Scissorman from Clock Tower. Like most folks outside Japan, my first exposure to Scissorman was in the PS1 sequel, known as Clock Tower 2 in Japan but simply Clock Tower everywhere else. I later played a fan translation of the original Clock Tower as a teenager and remember thinking Scissorman belongs up there in the pantheon of classic horror villains alongside Nemesis and Pyramid Head. In fact, if the original Clock Tower had been released globally, it’s conceivable that it would’ve successfully competed with PS1 survival horror icons and gone down a completely different trajectory.
Alas, the PS1 Clock Tower game that introduced the series for everyone outside of Japan wasn’t nearly as well-received as the original game. Its sequel, Clock Tower 2: The Struggle Within, was downright critically panned, and the final game in the series, Clock Tower 3 from PS2, put a nail in the series’ coffin…
…Until now, that is. Clock Tower: Rewind is an “enhanced” version of the original game coming courtesy of a partnership between retro maestros WayForward and Limited Run and IP rights holders Sunsoft and Capcom. It includes all of the content from the 1997 re-release The First Fear as well as an updated chase system in which Scissorman can follow you into more rooms and hide in more places; updated controls that let Jennifer run up and down stairs, find new hiding places, and use a few weapons; and a number of bug fixes and quality-of-life adjustments.
Clock: Tower Rewind will also include language options for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, opening one of the biggest cult classic horror games up to a bunch of new international audiences. Ya love to see it.
For more on the game, it’s never a bad time to revisit Retro Gamer’s conversation with director and creator Hifumi Kono on the making of Clock Tower.
