Clock Tower 3 & Demento/Haunting Ground Question

[Enetirnel]

As the thread title says, a question regarding both - has anyone had any of the following glitches in either game?

Such as the following:

- Game freezes on a particular cutscene, it continues along before absolutely freezing. (Some have said when Alyssa ends up in the first Stalker level, I've encountered this issue on the PAL-E version, I can't think of the code for it at the moment... when we get a flashback cutscene on the third Stalker level).

- Stalker Music continues when the Stalker has vanished.

- Music completely vanishes.

- Stalker attacks go through Alyssa, Fiona or Hewie - on the overall, causes them to essentially be invincible OR invisible depending as the Stalker may actually walk through the character.

- Stalkers never vanish, even when their theme is no longer playing.

(By the way, my copy of CT3 is perfectly fine/no scratches or anything on it - I've played it a couple of times but when I got it, pretty much brand new condition and it's not the PS2 glitching as the timing on the glitch is the exact same).

Sorry about this, just as I've encountered the cutscene glitch (as a few other people have reported on Clock Tower 3) I just wanted to find out which particular region versions' are the buggiest ones, as I'd also like to include that information on my CT fansite as it's bothersome to pick up a copy to find that it's got some issues that aren't in other region copies.

[chris_survivor]

I haven't play Clock Tower 3 for few months already ; but I don't remember having any of these glitches. Is the game unplayed after any of these glitches? , I sometimes remember that the stalker music continues to play a little while when the guy leaves.

[Enetirnel]

I haven't play Clock Tower 3 for few months already ; but I don't remember having any of these glitches. Is the game unplayed after any of these glitches? , I sometimes remember that the stalker music continues to play a little while when the guy leaves.

The music will generally play for a few seconds after, that's just the Stalker Timer finishing up in the Evasion Period. The music can glitch in either game, I've gone through Demento once with Innocent Freak / Debilitas Stalking Theme playing the entire time instead of the normal songs. (In other words, if the music continues playing for more than 30 seconds to 2 minutes after the Stalker has left/vanished with a sound effect).

The cutscene glitch, essentially renders the game unplayable in Clock Tower 3 - the cutscenes are pre-rendered and it starts to skip for example...
"A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-Al-Al-yyyyyyyy-S-S-S-S-S-SA" before returning and playing again, a few seconds later, it starts up again and then it eventually completely freezes. It's unplayable, as you can't skip the cutscenes.

The game still works, just it's impossible to get past the cutscenes that cause the game to freeze up - the only ones I've heard other people say the game froze on were:

Sledgehammer area introduction
May's death

And I've just had the Flashback ~ Phillip in the third stalker section, the cutscene triggers when you walk down the stairs of the mansion. The stuttering begins when Alyssa sees Nancy, Nancy speaks and the stuttering starts, it freezes and then goes back to normal. When Alyssa lives and the next section of the cutscene is triggered, it begins stuttering, lags and then completely freezes.

[Gradon]

Odd, everything worked fine in our PAL version of Clocktower 3.
The only glitch we had was on one of our playthrough (I say our, me and my brother), one of the items in the Hospital(?) had dissappeared, and it halted anymore progress. :S
Had to redo it.

[Enetirnel]

Odd, everything worked fine in our PAL version of Clocktower 3.
The only glitch we had was on one of our playthrough (I say our, me and my brother), one of the items in the Hospital(?) had dissappeared, and it halted anymore progress. :S
Had to redo it.

Strange, though I have seen items vanishing and reappearing after a reset and going back to the room without having to redo it.

Though, I'm starting to wonder if it's the console version as well that's causing the problem - though it shouldn't as I think it's one of the 2004 models though, there have been issues with other games by other developers that have had some freezing and crash issues.

It's just quite a bother, as even via emulator on my laptop the game runs quite slow and I've had to modify settings to even get the damn thing to get it working properly in PCSX2 - as it's so slow, it would take forever if at all even possible to get up to this spot again and see if it'll load the cutscene properly, OR if it doesn't on it or the older and newer ones that I've borrowed from cousins - then that would probably rule that possibility out...

So, that's why I thought that I'd ask around about this to just see if it's a particular region, particular release group (early or later release for that region) or what console it is or isn't working on to try and work out the problem.


Though, I wouldn't say that it's a buggy disc as I extracted the cutscene directly from the disc and had it playing without converting it perfectly fine.



The PS2 is - SCPH-50002.

Clock Tower 3 - SLES 51619 PAL E.

[Carnivol]

Sure it's not your PS2 singing its last song?

If the disc is clean, but the cutscenes are skipping and events don't trigger/load properly... especially those parts makes it seem like your PS2's laser has seen the best of days and is now struggling. Does your PS2 have problems starting games? Like, if you boot the PS2 and go to the browser and insert a game, does it sometimes not recognize it at all? (Could of course also be that the lens is just incapable of moving freely, so it recognizes the disc fine, but loading data gets troublesome)


Anyway, best suggestion I give is to either setup your PS2 with a HDD and boot HDLoader via a memory card (and then run as much stuff as possible via HDLoader), or evt. throw out the entire system and get a new one.

[Enetirnel]

Sure it's not your PS2 singing its last song?

If the disc is clean, but the cutscenes are skipping and events don't trigger/load properly... especially those parts makes it seem like your PS2's laser has seen the best of days and is now struggling. Does your PS2 have problems starting games? Like, if you boot the PS2 and go to the browser and insert a game, does it sometimes not recognize it at all? (Could of course also be that the lens is just incapable of moving freely, so it recognizes the disc fine, but loading data gets troublesome)


Anyway, best suggestion I give is to either setup your PS2 with a HDD and boot HDLoader via a memory card (and then run as much stuff as possible via HDLoader), or evt. throw out the entire system and get a new one.

No freezing, lag, skipping, inability to recognize discs, no loading issues.

The PS2 is perfectly fine, I haven't had any issues at all - I regularly check and clean it, opened it up before I posted the thread and it's all in fine working order - isn't filled with dust and/or dog hair, hasn't been dropped, lens is freely moving and the laser is capable of reading discs.

I've checked with games in perfect condition and my cousin's which are in shocking condition, and it hasn't had any issues over more than fifty games - the only issue has been with Clock Tower 3.

I can see if it'll run with HDLoader, I was also thinking about just getting a new one - though I don't particularly want to pay $200 and something for a new, previous generation console. ;

So, I'm going to see if I can check it on another one of the specific PS2 I've got and another one just to double-check to be sure.

Thank you Carn, I couldn't actually remember the name of HDLoader - so that's extremely helpful as I'm horrid with names.