Famicom on 14 September 1995 in Japan. The game sold well and was later re-released with some gameplay and graphical changes under the title Clock Tower: The First Fear on PlayStation, Windows, and WonderSwan. No versions of the game have been released outside Japan; however, fan translations exist. Human Entertainment began work on a sequel, Clock Tower (1996), also known as Clock Tower 2 in Japan. With a team of about 30 people, it was their first game to utilize a 3D graphics engine, although team veterans preferred to have used 2D graphics instead. With the announcement of Capcom's Resident Evil (1996) during development, the team was impressed and challenged themselves to create higher quality graphics. ASCII Entertainment marketed Clock Tower in North America as one of the first true horror games for the PlayStation console. It was released in Japan on 13 December 1996, North America on 1 October 1997, and in Europe in February 1998. The game sold close to half a million copies. Kono attributed some of this success to Resident Evil generating interest in horror games. The third game, Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within, known in Japan as Clock Tower: Ghost Head, was released in Japan in 1998 and North America in 1999. It was the first game in the series not directed by Kono, and released to critical failure. In Japan, the title is considered a spin-off. Human Entertainment went out of business in 2000, and Sunsoft became the owner of the Clock Tower intellectual property. A new game in the series, Clock Tower 3, was announced in April 2001, with Capcom co-producing it with Sunsoft. Japanese film director Kinji Fukasaku directed the cutscenes. The game was first shown at E3 in May 2002, where a non-playable demo was on show at the Capcom booth. Released in December later that year, Clock Tower 3 was a commercial failure. Capcom had projected sales of at least 450,000, but by the end of 2003, it had only sold 122,022 units. Clock Tower 3s commercial failure is speculated as the reason why Capcom and Sunsoft have not revisited the series since. Kono tried speaking to a publisher to run a reboot or re-release of the series, but they did not agree because they felt horror games were difficult to market. Related games Capcom's 2005 survival horror title Haunting Ground has been called a spiritual successor to the