Clock Tower: The First Fear (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
532A playthrough of Human Entertainment's 1997 survival horror adventure game for the Sony Playstation, Clock Tower: The First Fear.
The Japanese-exclusive Clock Tower: The First Fear was originally released on the SNES in 1995, and was later ported to the PlayStation and Wonderswan.
If you'd like to see the SNES version, you can find my playthrough of it here: https://youtu.be/47Tk6OeqcTo
The Playstation version of the game is largely the same as the SNES cart that it was based on. Some new graphics effects have been added (like the fog in the bathroom), there's a bit of FMV tacked in, the sound quality is considerably improved, and some new rooms have been added to the Burroughs mansion. The improvements are nice, but I can't say I felt they added anything meaningful to the game.
Still, Clock Tower is just as amazing at being quality horror on the PS1 as it was on the SNES. But, an important distinction should be made here: the game that the US received as Clock Tower was actually First Fear's direct sequel, and was known as Clock Tower 2 in Japan. This one - the original - never got an official release outside of Japan.
In this video I am playing from a CD image that has been patched into English. It's a real shame that this one never got an official release - it is by far the best game in the series. Clock Tower is quite understated in most ways, and it does an expert job of building tension and atmosphere with its effective sound design (the rip-off of Michael Oldfield's Tubular Bells theme from The Exorcist works very well here) and it's classic 2D sprite work. I also think that this one is quite a bit easier than the first US game is to go back and play - the 2D graphics have aged far more gracefully than the sequel's awkward, chunky, and generally ugly 3D character models.
In many ways it reminds me of SOS (an SNES game developed by Human). Both of them were quite forward thinking in their designs, but Clock Tower was a huge evolutionary step forward.
The game play is fairly simple, there are some basic puzzle-solving elements and the terrifying chase scenes, but the mansion is huge and the path you take through the game is entirely up to you. It's surprisingly non-linear, and the choices you make throughout the game can lead to one of nine total endings.
I went for the C ending in this playthrough. The S ending doesn't match up with the sequel, and the A ending requires you to skip certain sequences that provide a lot of the back story (like the secret room with the skeleton). Since endings A, B, and C are all considered canonical, and since I showed the B ending in my SNES playthrough, I went with C this time as the best compromise between being thorough and ending in a way that is consistent with the PS-only sequel.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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