Trivia / Splatterhouse

• Colbert Bump: Thanks to Happy Videogame Nerd and Big Al from Toonzone.
• Creator Backlash: Jim Cummings has indicated that he didn't care for voicing the Terror Mask, calling it a "fluke", saying he only did it for the money, with this dismissal probably being due to how unusually foul-mouthed the role is compared to most of his other fare.
• Deleted Role: Fred Tatasciore is credited for additional creature effects, although one of the characters he played, Francisco Miguel Cortes, was cut from the game, with the only remnant for them being sound files buried in the game.
• Executive Meddling and Troubled Production: A combination of both as a May 2018 article from Polygon reveals how shaky the development of the 2010 title was. But to summarize: Namco wanted to keep the game as an '80s styled traditional arcade brawler, from the graphics to the game mechanics. Unfortunately, BottleRocket Entertainment founder Jay Beard wanted none of it, essentially riding high off the success of The Mark of Kri during his time at Sony San Diego. They made enough content to comply with the agreed design documents, but otherwise the dev team was forced to do things Beard's way, not Namco's: trying to shoehorn in the targeting system from The Mark of Kri, very grotesque/oddball creature designs that didn't fit the game, the use of Gamebryo for the game engine, and various things that made it clear that his goal was making an original game, not a Splatterhouse reboot. Another nail in the coffin was they had a second team working on a The Flash game about the same time and publisher Brash Entertainment closed down in November 2008, which left BR with smaller coffers and a team without work. By February the next year, Namco made the executive decision to repo the dev kits, but told the team that the game wasn't cancelled and that a new temporary studio would be opened to finish it. After about three months, what followed was another year or so's worth of near-constant crunch development by both the temporary Carlsbad studio and the Santa Clara based Afro Samurai studio. By November 2010, the game was complete and the Carlsbad studio had been closed, save for one person waiting for Sony's final QA approval for the PS3 version.
• Franchise Killer:
  • The Splatterhouse series has always been a Cult Classic, and although the remake is a decent game in its own right, a combination of poor sales and Namco Bandai laying off most of the staff that worked on the game leave it's future very much in doubt.
  • Technically, the franchise was already dead in Japan, since the Western-made remake was never exported in Japan, as the series is rarely acknowledged by Bandai Namco Entertainment's Japanese branch and it's heavily implied the entire series could be an Old Shame, as to this date, there's few info about the Japanese creators of the franchise, other than the first game was credited to someone named Akira Usukura, according with Hardcore Gaming 101. Taking into account the Japanese-made games were a product of their era, along with many social shifts towards perception of violence between the U.S. and Japan, it's understandable why the Japanese branch doesn't want to have any relation with the series anymore.
    • However, the release of the first game as part of the Namco Arcade Collection, and the filing of a trademark for "Splatterhouse Encore" give new hope to fans hoping for more from the series.
• Genius Bonus: In the remake, the enemies are referred to as "teratroids", which combines the Latin words "teratro" (deformed, monstrous, misshapen) with the ending of "humanoid" (like a man).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The 2010 remake didn't sell very many units during its print run, making the game gradually become an expensive collector's item over the years. As of the early 2020s, complete boxed copies can range anywhere from 90 to 250 dollars depending on the condition, with new sealed ones sometimes surpassing 300.
• No Export for You: The original Splatterhouse had a Japanese-only PC port, which was closest to being arcade perfect next to the FM Towns port up until arcade original's inclusion in the 2010 game.
• Playing Against Type: Who voices the foul-mouthed, sadistic mask in the 2010 remake? Jim Cummings!
• Viral Marketing: Jennifer Willis as a Playboy centerfold.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The above-mentioned Polygon article reveals that the final version of the 2010 game was about 75% of what the dev team was going for after development was taken out of BottleRocket's management. Among those:
    • The game once had a level that took place in a frozen Nazi hangar; Rick would have fought Nazi zombies and mechs. It was presumably scrapped for not really making sense for the story of the game.
    • An island level that was supposed to take place after The Ruined Heart was cut from the game. Like that level, it would have had narration, except from one of the previous wearers of the Terror Mask, Francisco Miguel Cortes.The dialogue for this level is still in the game.
    • Originally, Mirror Rick showed signs of active sentience, attempting to pull a Kill and Replace on the real Rick with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
    • Biggy Man was supposed to have an obese appearance in the 2010 game, but it was scrapped and he was redesigned to look closer to the original (albeit still fairly stout) after negative fan reception.
    • Rick fighting a sentient giant, flaming Wicker Man was shown in some promotional materials, most likely indicating The Wicker Bride was supposed to have a boss fight.
    • And also, regarding the soundtrack, bands such as In Flames and GWAR and even CANNIBAL CORPSE have been mentioned to appear, but didn't in the end.
    • A few cut lines found in the code reveals that the Terror Mask would have been Evil All Along and actually aligned with the Corruption.
  • Perhaps the biggest of them all: The original idea of the original arcade game was that Rick was a slasher villain chasing Jennifer through the house, but was changed at the last minute. While the later games obviously made Rick unambiguously heroic, the first game isn't hard to interpret this way.
• Word of God: According to Bandai Namco, the canonical ending for Splatterhouse 3 is the Golden Ending, in which both Jennifer and David survive.

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