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“Fear is fascinating”
That was the official tagline for at least one title in the Clock Tower video game series that spanned at least 3 systems and is commonly regarded by fans of the survival horror genre as one of the building blocks of the craze that eventually spawned Resident Evil and Silent Hill, going as far back as the Super NES (SNES) days with Clock Tower: The First Fear. The intention of this review, however, is to focus on the Playstation version, called Clock Tower (Clock Tower 2 in its native Japan).
Unlike today’s most popular survival horror games, Clock Tower was point and click. You didn’t control the character’s body directly, but rather pointed them in the direction they needed to go in order to survive and discover items. This heightened the fear factor, as did playing as a set of characters that basically had no access to fancy weaponry. There are no flame throwers or shotguns in Clock Tower. You’re lucky if you are able to find mace or a good place to hide as the killer walks by.
Speaking of the killer, there are more than a few dangers in Clock Tower, but the real focus of the game is placed upon the infamous Norwegian child killer, Scissorman. A squat, limping psychopath whose choice of murder weapon is a giant pair of shears, Scissorman is never hesitant to use them to end your game, and main character Jennifer Simpson’s life. There are ways around meeting your doom at the hands of this prick though, including hiding in closets, under beds, and sometimes even taking the offensive and hitting him over the head with something. He never stays gone for long, but slowing him down will buy you the time you need to find important items needed to solve the final mystery.
When someone looks like this, they’re either dead or very uncomfortable.
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So I haven’t done one of these in a while, and I had a craving for old games about a week ago, so I tossed aside the newfangled for the dustfangled and prepared to swear a whole lot. I was not disappointed, but my neighbors might have been. In this volume, unlike the previous two, I’m going to focus on some nigh to completely impossible games that have little to no redeeming qualities. I mean, sure, Zelda II and Ninja Gaiden were frustrating, but they keep you coming back. This list consists of some pretty ugly, boring or just plain senseless creations of soulless monsters behind an 80′s game development kit, more commonly known as The Japanese.
Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones
Holy shit, this game is easily the hardest beat ‘em up in all history. Fuck Battletoads, the enemies in Double Dragon 3 would send them screaming back to the swamps that spawned them. In fact, if it weren’t for the cheat codes available, no one could ever beat this game, and even when you are completely invincible to all health loss, it’s still about as comfortable as watching a violent rape take place on an underage invalid (unless that sort of thing gets you in the pants, and then you’re welcome to my copy of this fucking bastard). Seriously, I can’t put this any other way but that, except possibly, you know those kung fu movies where the old man gets beat up in the beginning and left for dead, utterly incapable of defending himself against minute after grueling minute of punches, kicks, backflips, sideflips, weapons, and sadistic groin claws? Yeah, it’s pretty much like that playing this game. Sure, if you have the stomach to try and learn a pattern (hint: there’s only one pattern in this game and it’s DYING. A LOT.), maybe you can punch an enemy a few times with your ridiculously slow, fat jell-0 arms before he wakes up from his nap and continues beating you like a red-headed stepchild caught fucking the family cat.
Is it me or does Billy Lee really have to excuse himself here?
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There were enough games from the 80′s, early 90′s and even some following (mainly due to poor design/shitty camera angles) with the ability to drive a person half-insane (or in some cases, to the point of very real homicide) to choke a camel. Here are MOAR:
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Now don’t get me wrong about this or most of the other titles I cock back and lambaste for their murderous difficulty, I actually enjoy a lot of these games to this day, and with the lovely invention of the console emulator and advances in cheating, I enjoy them even more! On my unmistakably-named list “Holy shit – Games I remember beating when I was a kid but I don’t know how!”, Zelda 2 is at least in the top 5. I know that I didn’t do any major drugs when I was 10, so that couldn’t have been it. I suppose the random deity of your choice might have taken pity on me. Might have been alien intervention. Either way, Zelda 2 was the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. The first couple days of playing this game, you’ll think that you have the hang of the controls and that the AI is stupidly simple even for an 80′s video game. Just wait. Nintendo is just lulling you into a false sense of “I know what I’m doing” and will, mirthfully and with very little warning, drop a metric fuckton of 8-bit aggression on your fragile ego the moment you stumble into IronKnuckle and his tiny little sword of many deaths.
This one’s on a horse, Link! RUN!
The horrifying evolutionary next step up from Darknut from the original NES Legend of Zelda, IronKnuckle was abused as a concept character and is going to take it out on your unlubricated asshole. You’ll know you’ve met one when you DIE over and over again. To be fair, the early (orange-colored) versions of this megabitch are tame compared to the blue and red ones that follow. They will brutalize you in ways Freddy Krueger would consider overkill.
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So I wrote an article once for a friend’s website detailing the most horrifyingly impossible video games in creation (mostly consisting of those for the old NES system, and if you grew up in the 80s, DUH. You already knew that). As luck would have it, he changed the software for the main index, fully intending to re-add that piece and others at a later time. Then his computer shit the bed and he lost the database – hoo! Yeah, I know you’re reading this you fucking dickhead, I should have kept them out of your clumsy, knobby hands; it’s not bad enough that you tricked me into downloading bananaphone.mp3 at least 5 times by disguising it as other songs you said I might like, but then on top of it you had to just haul back and wipe your virtual Florida monkeybutt with my painstakingly crafted masterworks. ASSHOLE!
Regardless, I’ll just compose myself the best I can and offer up a new version of that article, since it’s impossible to forget the games that were in the original list. Oh fuck yes it is, believe me, I’ve tried. Some of them may be, even still, mocking me from their dusty places of rest under the bed back at the house where I grew up. For clarity, these are not listed in any particular order of annoyance, nor how cruel the Japanese game developers were feeling during the production of the title(s) in long overdue, sadistic response to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by turning American kids into irritable console zombies for 2 decades.
There’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen these screens…
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Ok, like the antagonist of the game in question, this one’s a no-brainer. If you played this game as a kid, you wanted to kill someone. If you didn’t want to kill someone, then I leave you to science because I have no fucking idea what’s wrong with you. Maybe your parents came home from work every day and beat the living shit out of you and you started to like it, and this went on for years – that’s how bad it would have been to have fully enjoyed this game, happily losing to Mike Tyson time and time again, if you even managed to make it to the champ at all. While Mike was busy training to pummel the 14 bazillionth Nintendo geek into pseudo-sentient tuna casserole, Nintendo would blissfully throw fighters like Mr. Sandman (who, for some odd reason, looked like a vampire when stunned) and Super Machoman in your face, and despite the fact that they would effortlessly play with Little Mac’s skull between their fists like two Chinese guys would play with a helpless little white ball in the Ping-Pong World Title match, they were still far easier to beat than “Iron Mike”.
Tyson’s NES arms were TNT-strapped jackhammers from Hell fueled by lightning that would obliterate anything they came across, including your youthful sanity. However, at least until the last fight, the game had a consistent learning curve: straight uphill. When you got to Tyson, the hill just fucking fell on you.
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