Horror classic Clock Tower's Windows 95 port jabbed a giant pair of scissors through my rose-tinted glasses

GamesHorrorHorror classic Clock Tower’s Windows 95 port jabbed a giant pair of scissors through my rose-tinted glassesWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

Pasokon Retrois our regular look back at the early years of Japanese PC gaming, encompassing everything from specialist ’80s computers to the happy days of Windows XP.

Developer:Human EntertainmentReleased:1997Platforms:Windows 95(Image credit: Human Entertainment, Internet Archive)

Clock Tower cover for Windows 95

What was the best format to play Clock Tower, a suspenseful point-and-click adventure packed with spine-chilling chase sequences, surprise cannibalism, and heaps of death and graphic violence on back in 1997? Was it with a controller on a painfully slow Nintendo console most famous for hosting mushroom-powered plumbers? Or was it on a powerful PC running Windows 95, the natural home of crisp pixel art and mature mouse-driven escapades?

That’s right. It was definitely… it was definitely the SNES. I know, I know. It doesn’t feel right—but it is true.

This old PC version of Clock Tower seems to be the rarest port Human’s horror game ever had, and as such took a mildly irritating amount of time, effort, and money to track down. (It’s completely unrelated to the recentRewindrelease from WayForward, which is the wonderful SNES original with some game-enhancing extras and modern QoL features on top). When I finally found a Windows 95 copy, I expected something luxurious and exciting in return for my blind enthusiasm for niche ports of old horror games. After all, PCs—even really old ones—are justbetter, right?

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

Instead I got a rather poor CG intro starring the world’s least interesting clock tower. More offensive: I had to suffer through almost embarrassingly crude dithered mist effects in place of the original’s swish mood-setting transparencies shortly after I started to play.

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Thrilling.

The slightly expanded colour palette only seems to introduce dithering where there were once clean flat colours. Fantastic. The overall effect resembles a photocopy of an incredible painting, something the same and not quite right all at once.

Image1of3(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Image1of3

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

Besides, it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s still Clock Tower, for starters—and that means it’s still one of the most enjoyable ways to send your heart rate through the roof while dashing around a grimy mansion filled with weird traps, locked doors, and shocking revelations. It’s not a game that can be completely mastered, as several key item locations and even a few whole rooms are randomised at the beginning of every new game. I could play this forever and still only be able to at best make educated guesses about where I needed to go next or what I’d find when I walked through a particular door.

Running away from a murderous lunatic may not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but it’s still better than mindless doomscrolling my social media feeds.

Image1of7(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Image1of7

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

(Image credit: Human Entertainment)

Clock Tower horror game

Before tracking down such a rare disc I thought I was going to have a good time with a premium version of a great game; instead I got a heavily dithered reminder of just how far we’ve come with PC ports in general. These days I can expect most games to turn up on time and look at least as good as they do everywhere else, and when we do get retro revivals they’re more often than notpixel-perfect affairs interwoven with illuminating extras. In contrast this wasn’t the best version of Clock Tower available in the ’90s, and these days it’s not even the best version of Clock Tower available on PC.

But at the time it would have been infinitely preferable to no Clock Tower at all, and here in the cold hard light of 2024 it’s an unvarnished and most importantly,educational, slice of history stored on a single CD-ROM.

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