Are you sure you want this?

Today I found a copy of Clock Tower: The First Fear, the Wonderswan version, at the local toy shop in the mall. It was priced 300 yen, marked down from 4900 yen (a total of about $2.50, down from $40). When I took it to the counter, the woman behind the register looked at me incredulously.

“Are you sure you want this,” she asked. “It’s for Wonderswan.” She ran her finger under the Wonderswan logo to emphasize the decrepitness of the dead handheld system. When she rang it up, the register insisted that the total cost was still 4900 yen. She ended up having to manually key in the discounted prince. I paid by dropping three 100-yen coins into a plastic tray on the counter.

As I left the store, I noticed that a handful of other Wonderswan games were available for sale, and all of them looked like they’d been sitting on the shelf for years. I am probably the first person to buy a Wonderswan game from that place in the last three years. The woman behind the register probably thought I was crazy.

12 thoughts on “Are you sure you want this?

  1. 300 yen flat? No sales tax in Japan?
    Great story tho’ Remember to declare
    “It’s for Wonderswan.” at customs 🙂

  2. I played shortly in a ROM of “Clock Tower for Wonderswan” but dropped it pretty soon. I really like the SNES-Version. But this one seems to be just 1:1 the same… only monochrome. And I think that hurts the game, ’cause the orignal was such dark you cant see much detail in the b/w-version

  3. Hey but how can u understand the damn games if there in Japanese? Wont it mess up the story expirience?

  4. Well, some people out there can speak several languages, not only their native one. And believe it or not, Japanese can be one of these languages…

  5. I played Clock Tower for the Wonderswan when I downloaded the Emulator and Rom, but sometimes the game freezes a lot after picking a mode or watching the story scene. It’s quite interesting how the lady feels dull throughout those old Wonderswan Games. Can you give any interesting reviews about the Playstation version of the first Clock Tower? I really want to know about the SUPER extras in that remake and that zombie that can finally chase you…

  6. I’m warning you, the game isn’t as high of quality as the snes one. Especially the English version because of the horrible translation.

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