Clock... Tower...? Oh God...

Clock tower is a 15 year old Super Nintendo Game that is perfect for playing around Halloween. It was never released in America, but you can find some fan made translations for it. It is made by Human who also has made a creepy NES game known as Monster party, and also other games for SNES, NES, Playstation... the list goes on.

The very eerie title screen for Clock Tower

Clock Tower is about a group of Orphans being adopted by the Barrows, who live in a giant mansion. Mary Barrows leads them in to the mansion and tells them she is going to get Simon Barrows. After a long period of time one of Jennifer's friends tells her to go look for Mary. Once you leave the large hall, you hear a scream and the game officially starts...

The game play is that of a point and click adventure, but with the shoulder buttons you can go to either end of the room according to which one you press. The game play is quite simple, but it can be quite difficult since all you can do is run from the antagonist. You can not actually fight him, and most of the time you must simply hide or just run and go to a place where he can not get you. The game is littered with puzzles and different events, and the ending differs depending on what events you end up seeing/encountering and what puzzles you go through.

The sprites and the cut scene images are done really well and are extremely creepy, especially for the Super Nintendo. Each character has a distinct look and the colors throughout the game are used very well to create a very creepy atmosphere...

One of the first death scenes you can encounter

This game was essentially the pioneer for survival horror games, and it is still scary to this day. It is one of those games i do not think i will ever finish for the fact that i am actually... too scared to get through it... Clock Tower is also one of the first games that utilizes multiple endings, which is quite impressive since its a cartridge game. There are about 9, with varying different events and most of them are just swapped out survivors or different death scenes for specific characters.

Jennifer facing the antagonist scissor man, or also known as Bobby Barrows

The music in Clock Tower is probably one of the creepiest scores, although there is very little variety. The sound effects are done very well, and on top of that are absolutely spine-chilling. As you walk down hallways, you can hear water dropping, birds chirping, and whatever else you encounter over a deathly silent back drop.

Clock Tower is one of the scariest and innovative game of its time. It definitely created the survival horror genre that we used to know. As opposed to survival horror games today which are focused on killing the enemy, and are definitely not very scary at all... Clock tower has a few sequels, but do not touch the third one as it is definitely not as scary or as good. The game mechanics are not similar in any way.

Make sure you play this game in the dark, and make sure you are the only one in the room... You definitely will continuously jump throughout your gaming session.

This game is being remade by Mansyon Soft. It is titled as Remothered and the game is still in development. The expected release date is early 2011, and it is going to be for PC. There is very little info on the game currently... but the developers posted a game play trailer for it: