Splatterhouse Reboot - What Happened?

good evening and welcome to another ghoulish monstrous and shame slash blood-soaked episode of waha the show where we dissect some of the saddest most disappointing videogame disasters of all time so then let's get right to it shall we today's terrible topic is unfortunately something that strikes a particularly sensitive chord in my soul because it was a game that I was personally looking forward to had a legacy to stack up against an was being worked on by a crew of passionate creatives that simply found themselves in an unenviable situation today we are discussing 2010 splatterhouse remake you're gonna have to learn to love the pain the House of splatter was built smack dab in the middle of the /ur Renaissance of the 1980s specifically 88 just to put you in the mindset what were other notable horror franchises doing at the time while Freddy was trying to conquer the dream master Kane Hodder slipped on the hockey mask to bathe in some new blood and a little buddy named Chucky started to carve up cinemas nationwide while were horrid video games doing nothing cuz they barely existed at the time outside of maybe some obscure home computer games crappy Atari adaptations and Castlevania wasn't exactly a booming genre battle changed when Namco and Lee splatterhouse on to the arcade scene which much like Castlevania was an homage to Universal Monsters splatterhouse was a send-up of American slasher / horror films it starred everyman Ric Taylor who becomes possessed by the evil and vaguely sports shaped terror mask and was tasked with saving his girlfriend Jennifer from the mad dr. West to do this he'd have to survive the many gore Laden hallways of the West mansion and fight as many movie references as possible with the Evil Dead being one of the most obvious the game was a hit featuring then taboo levels of violence and mayhem and received a lone turbo graphics port if you want to see someone get super nerdy on some classic splatter house check out one Derek Alexander's video on the series in the description below two sequels were then released in the following years both exclusive to the genesis with even a chippy based spin-off and explicably making its way to the NES of all things that's like releasing a video game based on the human centipede on the DS published by Sanrio now like we mentioned splatterhouse the third splattered onto the genesis in 1993 making it the last century in the series for 17 that is until Namco resurrected the IP gave it to rise of excite developers Bottlerocket then they fired bottle rocket then they hired the Afro Samurai team to finish it then formed a brand new team to help them then release the game a critical commercial failure and hasn't breathed a word about the franchise ever since what [ __ ] haha now I have to preface this a bit if you followed splatterhouse even casually from around 2008 to 2010 you would know was looking grim even back then Namco couldn't contain all the explosions exploding off screen from the general public but it was only until earlier this year where polygons took a deep dive into the hellish development of the game where a lot of new insight has been gleamed I'll be referencing that article later on but before that let's just take a surface level look at the dark clouds that swirled around the west mansion during that fateful time period in 2007 Namco would contract Bottlerocket who are fresh off making rise of the Kasai the less warmly reviewed successor to the mark of Cree with the director's position falling on to the pointy shoulders of one Jay beard development had started but it wasn't until May of 2008 where the game was formally unveiled to the public Namco gleefully went all-in on the edgy blood-soaked aesthetic showing lots of great concept art and listing primal and gritty as a gameplay feature this announcement also promised a 2009 release date that is a thing that did not happen in fact the thing that did happen in 2009 where reports that Namco had unceremoniously yanked the development kits and all work done up until that point from bottle rocket and was shopping the project around elsewhere to all of us at the time this would seem like a big mean move by a big mean publisher but it was Namco trying its best albeit not in the most elegant way to say the project a month later and March Namco a gone record saying that the only reason a project gets taken away from a developer is due to performance issues and plainly stated that bottle rocket was not meeting their requirements main development duties would then pass on to the Afro Samurai team that was working within Namco itself following that delays more delays than you could shake a nail filled 2x4 at to any casual splatter freak these were all ill omens for the reboots chances of success and splatterhouse even events heyday never really achieved the notoriety of its contemporaries like Castlevania so it already had an uphill climb ahead of it what's interesting is that a lot of projects that wander into this hazy purgatory like state of development almost never see the light of day Starcraft ghost being a great example this new take on the franchise however just like Rick himself would eventually crawl through a pool of its own blood to reach its goal it wasn't until the end of 2010 where the game finally released on November 22nd unfortunately missing the kind of important spooky month of October where Namco marketing reps felt the game would have had its best chance to sell the most copies which it did not sell spot arouse already had a stinky stigma about it and the critics took that to heart it got roasted in reviews and many fingers were pointed in many different directions there's a whole shitload of seven years bad luck coming your way lots of people blame Namco for the last-minute developer switch the Afro Samurai team whose last game was middling at best also took a shellacking and of course splatterhouse was the game that killed bottle rocket which officially closed its doors well before the game came out as they were never able to secure a deal with any other publisher we shall see why that's the widely known version of the game's development cycle that most people would be familiar with but remember that polygon article we mentioned earlier it's about time for that I implore you to read it in full link in the description below but a truncated version is definitely in order here Namco's miqo'te oh I was in charge of bringing back splatterhouse and to make it into a big juicy bloody rare steak for gamers to consume and more specifically western ones the mandate was to make a heavy metal infused violent affair as that was the style at the time in the testosterone-fueled age of the 360 and the ps3 you know makes sense the franchise was already known for pushing the envelope in the late 80s and early 90s but it was also a risky time for game development as well so Namco needed to find a competent but not overly expensive studio to bring splatterhouse to life enter Bottlerocket who was chosen from the goodwill the team and garnered on its previous work with Sony Namco's design parameters for the reboot were not complicated a gritty art style buckets of blood and remaining true to the original games by making it a simple brawler that anyone could pick up and play that however was not exactly what Bottlerocket were making Jay beard was the intermediary between Namco and the other leads on the development team and promptly ignored all of their demands in fact mr. beard decided that the game needed more rise of the Kasai and started to implement the targeting system from that game into splatterhouse despite Namco wanting none of it character design was also a point of contention as instead of just simple ghouls and zombies the art team had been directed to start exploring alternative ideas that maybe strayed too far from what Namco was expecting every time producers from the publisher would make a visit to bottle rocket mr. beard would show them anything from the game lying around that would fit what they were expecting when the suits would leave he would then tell the team to continue on with the stuff he was expecting however when milestone builds would be sent to Namco there would be no hiding what the game was turning into and nanka would make their displeasure known what complicated matters was that this was bottle rockets first HD game and while development was going OK on the 360 version in terms of performance the ps3 was seriously lagging behind mainly because of the engine that was chosen which of course was Unreal 3 ho no ho they could only be so lucky for whatever reason gamebryo is what splatterhouse ran on and bottle rocket were not equipped to deal with the headaches that would present and co got increasingly nervous with the lack of progress in pretty much every area of the game and mr. beard was still ignoring a lot of their mandates remember when we said that matters were getting complicated let's complicate matters further during all this bottle rocket took on another project for a completely different publisher this time infamous money-laundering scheme brash entertainment who has a long rap sheet of screen over many a decent development house they had bottle rocket working on an adaptation of DC's flash and we're trying to make it into a huge open world action game thing but like all their projects under its umbrella everything came crashing down when the sleazy publisher suddenly declared bankruptcy they could no longer pay the multiple developers that had under contract and the flash game was unceremoniously canceled before the public even knew it existed for more on this check out Liam Robertson's video on the flash game which again you can find in the description below so without that safety net of two titles keeping them afloat the pressure was on for bottle rockets deliver with Splatterhouse which as we know was going really well with every new milestone build Namco kept seeing a lot of its feedback and directions still not making it into the game they were paying for and by early 2009 the decision was made to try and salvage something Jay beard and Namco clearly one seen eye-to-eye and with their last remaining game no longer in studio Bottlerocket closed six months later Namco however realized the talent that was on the development team and personally contacted several key members J beard oddly not being one of them and offered the chance to finish building the splatter house and even set up another office for them to do so the new digs would be located in Carl's blad California and we made up of about 20x Bottlerocket employees who had split the work with the Afro Samurai team who were located in Santa Clara California most Californians might know this but that's not across the street as both cities are good six hours away from each other for another whole year the long distance relationship between both teams was maintained but it was always under a constant strain one of the main reasons why is that they almost had to start again from scratch C and all the time mr. beard o was in charge Bottlerocket never got the game to anywhere near complete there were some unconnected maps created and you can make Rick move but that was it it was still missing a variety of features effects and just wasn't fun that year a further development time was a constant state of crunch as Namco could pull the plug if anything went wrong but fortunately through a lot of long hours and late night pizza both teams were able to pull it off and got the game to a playable finish state in late October of 2010 not surprising the game wound up feeling unpolished lots of bugs and if he controls plagued the platforming and side-scrolling sections additionally the first few hours of the game were some of its roughest as the team simply ran out of time to balance things further and to properly convey to the player how everything worked showing why we call it splatter house this as you can guess makes for a bad first impression but as the game goes on you can clearly see a lot of love and passion poured into the surprisingly fleshed out story as well as featuring lots of extras and has loads of imaginative level designs and some pretty fun boss battles all in all it's a miracle splatterhouse wound up being as good as it is all things considered unfortunately even with all that work and crunch to try to save the whole thing as we all know the critical reception for the game was not good and of course didn't equate into strong sales either a Carl's blood studio was closed as well because it was always meant to be a temporary thing to finish the game and everyone went their separate ways Jay beard you say he currently works as an art director at Amazon Games in San Diego which is good because you should probably keep that guy out of a directing chair as for Rick Jennifer and dr. West well shockingly after eight years Namco Bandai opened up a mysterious web site just a few months ago which featured a dark foreboding house dripping with atmosphere and untold horrors which turned out just being DLC for some [ __ ] sword art online mobile hey if you have a nose for failure and want to throw those stinky videogame turns up on our stage suggest one in the comments below or send me a frank and cordial email to Matt muscles at gmail.com thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 680,791

Keywords: Splatterhouse, Let's Play Splatterhouse, Splatterhouse Remake, Wha Happun, Video Game Scandals, Horror Games, Halloween Games

Id: 6RDA-YBzYY8

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018