Clock Tower Rewind is an all-timer of the genre presented in a kind of wonky package. The cartoonish new promotional art used in the opening animation sits aesthetically at odds with the game's appeals to photo-referenced mundane realism, and the same can be said for the opening and credits themes that utilize vocals, by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Emi Evans respectively--reliable professionals, but whose utilization in this context is odd, and particularly in McGlynn's case just evokes
Silent Hill which she's inextricably associated with. A related issue turns up in trophy names too, at least two of which quote
Resident Evil, which is something I'd rather avoid for how tired a nod it is, and how needless for something that's perfectly capable of standing on its own as its own work.
The fun stuff here are the bonus materials, like a newly recorded interview with game director Hifumi Kono, or packaging scans and voice-acted motion comics... the game's own presentation falls short in multiple ways. From what it appears the game uses the
Deluxe romhack as a base for integrating content from the PS1 port into the SFC original (running on stairs, new scares, new Scissorman behaviour), but the fidelity doesn't carry on through as the game uses Limited Run Games's Carbon Engine emulator, which is notoriously spotty across their releases, as it is here: slowdown is introduced to multiple scenes and the audio crackles and pops constantly like you're running an outdated release of Snes9x. The display options don't really leave one satisfied, either: the CRT filter (no further options) is thoroughly unattractive (speaking as someone who prefers to use one most of the time with vintage material) and there are only variations on a 8:7 SFC-internal aspect ratio and no 4:3 options to speak of.
For something that titles itself "rewind", that selfsame feature that's by now a standard of modern old game releases is oddly restrictive and only allows rewinding a handful of seconds, which is in almost all cases where you'd want to use it insufficient, as all animations, player movement and even the bursts of action in
Clock Tower are very slow--if avoiding a Scissorman encounter is the baseline for what you'd use rewind for, then practically you're never afforded enough time to backtrack far enough to escape the outcome. Offering one single save slot and requiring to exit out of the game to restart for a load is also a curious decision for something that's built around a large number of endings to replay for and the many explorational branches that determine the conclusions.
It's still
Clock Tower, but considering Human Entertainment are long gone and as the boot-up sequence throws a host of companies involved in leveraging its properties (Sunsoft, Capcom, Wayforward, Limited Run), it's a slightly nonplussed feeling as far as "supporting the creator" sentiment goes.