Clock Tower Creator Didn't Know About Its Upcoming Re-Release

A decade or so ago I studied traditional animation with Don Bluth for 2 years. Incredible man, absolute hero. All of us in his class had grown up with his movies. Newcomers would always make the same mistake of saying something like "I really loved the Land Before Time movies" or "Fievel goes West was my favourite" or asking him a plot detail about Secret of NIMH 2 or whatever. He had absolutely nothing to do with any of the sequels and was clearly unhappy they'd been made without his involvement or blessing - even though he knew he had no legal say in the situation, it was obviously painful to have characters and projects you were so close to get continued without you. The only sequel/followup he was asked to have anything to do with was the Bartok spinoff from Anastasia and he was always happy to talk about that one and seemed delighted to have been invovled despite it being a low budget straight to VHS title.

There were even Disney, and later Fox projects that he was initially invovled in developing but then asked to have his name removed from them (or just quit before things were finanlised) because he disagreed with the artistic direction they were taking, but clearly still felt personally attached to them and if we accidentally mentioned them (often not knowing he'd even been involved as some of them aren't public record) you could tell it still stung many years later, especially a pet 2d project of his that got evolved into a CG / 3D animated film much to his dismay. This is actually something I can now relate to in my own personal life, there's been quite a few fairly big/presitgious "Hollywood" movies that I've walked off set in protest and asked to not be credited on and even refused to be paid for (usually on moral/ethical grounds rather than artistic, but that's the Hollywood studio system for you) and I feel somewhat of a sense of indignation whenever I see those projects being praised, and it makes me want to go on long NDA breaking career ending rants! lol.

For me, I'd never consider doing a remake or working on an existing franchise without seeking to make sure the original director or creator was ok with it... I can back that up as I actually worked on a NOTLD project and spoke to Romero briefly about it to state my intentions and get his blessing even though there was no legal reason to do so.

I'm not criticising the LRG Clocktower team in any way, they all seem super passonate and respectful of the property and i'm looking forward to it. I think I remember hearding MVG saying he was invovled too and I have a lot of respect for him. But as this article says, it seems extremely strange they wouldn't reach out to Kouno even if not to ask for permission, just to let him know it was happening and to reassure him they are big fans of the original and are striving to do it justice.

Given how long it takes LRG to ship a game, maybe he'll hear something from them in a year or two.

@samuelvictor "especially a pet 2d project of his that got evolved into a CG / 3D animated film much to his dismay."

Ice Age, right? Even though the original ended up great, one of my greatest wishes is to go to the alternate universe where the Don Bluth/Gary Goldman-directed Ice Age got made.

@ArcadianLegend99 Yup. I wasn't sure how well known that fact is or how much Don likes to talk about it publicly, its definitely a sore point and also something he probebaly doesn't like to publicly moan about for professional reasons or to protect/respect the artists that worked on thse films. But yeah he's always wanted to make a full film tackling the last days of the dinosaurs, since watching Fantastia as a kid. Ice Age started off as a 2d animated movie, with a lot more serious tone, literally about the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Heck that was basically what Land Before Time was before Speilberg pushed the slightly reduced violence and neutered ending which lets you believe the dinos survived if you want them to. But the intention was that the "Great valley" is dinosaur heaven. So you can see why the many "sequels" that followed, with far worse quality animation for the most part too, would feel insulting to him - same with Ice Age becoming a seemingly never ending series of sequels with fart jokes and slapstick.

Gary Goldman is also a great man. I only got to speak to him a handful of times but he was always willing to answer questions via email, give feedback/ecouragement as well. Very fond memories of those times.

correct me if i'm wrong but this situation sounds worse than nintendo's hatred of its fans.

after reading samuelvictor and JJtheTexan's comments, this sound like something i would expect of china in regards to them making knokcoffs of things.

like...wtf? you're just taking and continuing IP's without even notifying the creators of those IP's?

i mean, sure, it's good that the game is getting a re-release (even if it's being done by lrg of all companies...) but this is a nasty situation imo.

seems...wrong to me in how it's been handled.

Hmm, love the game and the movie Phenomena that inspired it. This feels wrong, considering the limitations of the time, would have been great to have a remake exactly the way it was envisioned to be. Almost sounds like more of a fan project, no involvement from its creator and it's just the original game with an intro slapped on before you start it.

I kind of get it why they maybe have at least contacted the OG creator but in the end of the day it is a job. I have personally some years ago created something and I am somewhat attached to it. If my former team/boss wanted to upgrade it or modernize it, why would they ask me? They would only maybe acknowledge my former work in the final version, nothing more.

Seems like MVG and Limited Run Games talk their mind too soon and forgot that there's actually people who originally made these games possible. How do you miss someone as important as the Clock Tower creator himself and trying to counterfeit his game without him knowing? For someone who also respect the original creator and want to give them credits, I'm very disappointed on how they handle this.

Like Pat and Ian of the CUPodcast said, don't get attached to project from scummy companies or else you'll get your reputation ruin and at the end of the day it'll be you that the fans will throw the torches and pitchforks at and not the corporations, just look at Rerez with the ALL Controller, Gamester81 with the Coleco Chameleon, SmashJT with the Intellivision Amico, Jason Schrier of Kotaku who advertised for the scummy Kickstarter RPG Unsung Story which still had not been release for consoles yet, Christian Whitehead with Sonic Mania (even after they help with the game and the remakes they still get look down and disrespected by Sega), and MatPat from Game Theory who stand to represent Google Stadia only to get embarassed thereafter.

These people had their reputation ruin by scummy corps and scammers that I'm surprise most still had not learn from it yet. Hopefully for MVG sake he doesn't get bulldoze by customers when LRG leaves him in the dust. I'm not saying leave while you still can but do be careful cause now the attentions are on you and make one huge mistake and it'll all come crumbling down.

@echoplex

Look into Led Zeppelin's first record.

Same with Dr. Dre The Chronic.

Both sold a bazillion records before being forced to credit all the artists they 'borrowed' from.

"The Human Factor" by Metal Church was sort of a protest song for early-90s hip hop exploding in popularity by sampling music without permission instead of coming up with their own rhythms and melodies.

@JJtheTexan The only difference between that and Clock Tower was that Clock Tower had one director which is Hifumi Kouno and is not a collaboration, Super Mario RPG had two directors cause it was a collaboration between two leaders: Chihiro Fujioka of Square and Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo. Since Fuijioka is no longer with Square, the other side of the lead team is Miyamoto who is still with Nintendo and as long as one leader is still handling the game it's a done deal as long as Square Enix and Nintendo are fine with it.

@Serpenterror So, every Final Fantasy remake is scum? Sakaguchi left after... X, I think?
Well, it would make sense. X was developed within the same time as The Spirits Within, which reportedly flopped so hard on Square that they needed Enix to bail them out with the merger.
(though X was also when the game design became more video than game.)

Seems to be one glaring thing most everyone throwing shade is overlooking in here, even though Kouno-san is the creator of Clock Tower, Human Entertainment went out of business in 2000.

Sunsoft now owns the IP.

LRG licensed it from them to do this remake. Should they have asked Kouno-san to participate, yes, could they still, yes, will they, I don't know. They worked with the creator of Trip World so anything is possible.

Also MVG is the lead engineer of the Carbon Engine that LRG owns, so he isn't going anywhere.

But it'd be nice to see a little more factual discussion instead of rumor mill based on John's initial statement regarding his email to Kouno-san. Which could be perceived as being provocative, but I don't believe was intended to be.