In 2005, Xbox 360 was new to stores, PlayStation 3 was around the corner, media giants Namco and Bandai had just merged, and Makoto Iwai took a job as a senior vice president at Namco Bandai’s newly joined U.S. Office.Iwai, a Sony veteran, says his mission was clear: to find a local hit for the new generation. The company had a stable of legacy franchises like Ridge Racer and Tekken from its studios in Japan, but the Western market was growing. Violent, edgy, Western-focused games like Grand Theft Auto were taking off, and Namco Bandai wanted a piece of that success.It tried a game based on the American anime series Afro Samurai. It tried a reboot of in-house action series Dead to Rights. It tried the mythological adventure Enslaved.
It tried a gravity shifting shooter called Inversion. And then there was Splatterhouse.A late-’80s gore-fest, the Splatterhouse series originally flickered to life in arcades.
Taking advantage of the slasher genre’s popularity, the game featured a Jason Voorhees-like masked hero named Rick splattering a variety of ghoulish creatures in a crude beat-’em-up.Since it was a brutal, M-rated franchise and Namco Bandai owned the IP, the publisher’s American branch was enthusiastic. “Resident Evil was a big success by Capcom,” says Iwai. “We sought similar success by using a well-known franchise.
I thought that was a shortcut.”What came next involved finding an American development studio with a penchant for brawlers, a choice that would eventually haunt Namco Bandai. In retrospect, the casualties of Splatterhouse were significant: wasted development funds, a shuttered third-party studio and a newly opened first-party team — which then closed when Splatterhouse shipped. The circumstances were as messy as the blood-soaked game.“I learned a lot from Splatterhouse I wouldn’t wish on anybody else,” says Russell Schiffer, Namco Bandai’s senior director of technology, laughing as he speaks. Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai Namco Enter BottleRocketTo kick off development of the project in 2007, Namco Bandai chose BottleRocket Entertainment. The studio was staffed with many members of the team that had worked on Sony’s PlayStation 2 brawler The Mark of Kri, a critical darling known for an unusual targeting system where button command prompts appeared above enemy heads.“I knew Jay Beard, BottleRocket founder,” says Iwai. “There was a strong push from the studio side to use BottleRocket.
They were quite renowned.”. Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai NamcoSigned to a deal, BottleRocket put approximately 35 people to work on Splatterhouse. It was one of two projects for the studio, coexisting alongside a game based on DC Comics’ Flash for publisher Brash Entertainment.The original ’80s Splatterhouse used a simple arcade hook, with Rick punching slimy ghouls and smashing monsters in the vein of a gory Altered Beast. Wooden boards and cleavers were the weapons of choice. Splatterhouse, though, wasn’t a series known for depth.For the new game, Namco Bandai stuck to that idea. A design document set out development goals for traditional brawler combat and a visual style reminiscent of the old games, along with other nods to the originals.That wasn’t the plan BottleRocket followed, beginning a rift between the developer and publisher.“There was a big pull between what Namco wanted and what Jay Beard wanted,” says Scott Holty, who joined BottleRocket seven months into development as a senior designer. “Those two things never really coincided.
They were never in lockstep with what each side wanted with the game.”Many involved in the project say BottleRocket’s approach resembled its past work a little too closely.“They were really trying to shoehorn in that blue/red Mark of Kri targeting system, and that’s not what Namco wanted at all,” says former BottleRocket concept artist Dave Wilkins.Along with that, the character designs moved away from Splatterhouse’s typical selection of monsters. In their place came designs that some on the art team found strange. This image contains sensitive or violent content Tap to display Splatterhouse concept art of a naked character with a TV on his head. Bandai Namco“There was a guy with a TV set on his head, and it was plugged into his crotch.
It wasn’t very Splatterhouse-like,” says Alvin Chung, brought on as an environment artist at BottleRocket. “The new designs were just kind of oddball. I don’t even know how to describe it. From a video game perspective, they didn’t really read well. You couldn’t tell what it was.”These ideas strayed from Namco Bandai’s desired path.“They were basically supposed to work on Splatterhouse along with a design document of which we mutually agreed,” says Iwai. “That part only showed when our staff visited with them. Right after Bandai Namco staff left their premises, they started doing a different thing, which was ordered by Jay.”“Every single time they’d deliver a milestone, Namco Bandai had complaints and issues with it.
They kept reiterating they did not want Mark of Kri,” says Holty.In addition to the design not meeting Namco’s specifications, a variety of behind-the-scenes problems at BottleRocket created a development bottleneck. Progress slowed.“The big decision they made, which was a bad decision, was to use the Gamebryo game engine,” says Michael Seare, who began the project at BottleRocket as a physics programmer and later became lead engineer. “From a technical standpoint, it is a horrible engine in that it’s not fast. When it comes down to pushing bits around, it was terrible.”In the art department, Chung came onto the project, joining a team composed mostly of recent graduates.“I don’t think they had produced anything for the PlayStation 3 before,” says Chung.
“I remember coming in and working on one level, and they never understood how a normal map could make something look good. It was mind-blowing.”“ Splatterhouse from the BottleRocket side started off showing some really nice progress, and then it started to feel like BottleRocket producers were showing us, ‘Look, we reworked the art on this character — again,’” says Schiffer. “That started sending up red flags about ‘gosh, why aren’t you showing us more gameplay progress?’. We would see gameplay along the way, of course, but after so many of those, and it was several of them — other people, not me; the people on the business side — began to get nervous. When they looked into it deeper, they determined progress was not at the rate we wanted it to be.”Wilkins saw all of this as a management issue. “You had lead designers and designers who were doing really solid, awesome work, and then the shot-callers at the top would be like, ‘No, I want to see this,’” he says.
“We’d say, ‘Yeah, but it’s Namco’s game. They’re paying to keep the lights on.’”. Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai Namco”It’s always difficult in that position because you want to push for your creative voice, but at the same time, you’re trying to represent the company you’re working for,” says Holty. “Then you also realize that Namco is the one that’s paying the company.”BottleRocket’s team, with Jay Beard continuing with more or less the same vision, progressed on Splatterhouse for 18 to 24 months.
The Flash continued as well, keeping BottleRocket working at capacity. Then, in November 2008, Brash Entertainment shuttered, which meant that BottleRocket’s development on The Flash. That left BottleRocket with Splatterhouse and a second team without work.Those we spoke to for this story gave conflicting answers on the fate of the Flash developers. Some said those team members stayed on and helped with Splatterhouse. Others said BottleRocket kept working on The Flash, with hopes of securing another publisher. Another person said they were let go soon after Brash folded.
Multiple sources reported feeling surprised, though, that the company kept spending at this time, noting as an example that BottleRocket built an in-house theater room despite having only one project in development.Namco Bandai higher-ups were still displeased with BottleRocket’s lack of progress. “When I saw it, it was a collection of features and pieces but with no real metagame behind it, and the tools were so poorly implemented that no design was coming,” says David Robinson, Namco Bandai’s executive producer on Splatterhouse.“I went down there and started meeting with the guys, trying to get my own feel for it,” says Roger Hector, then the senior vice president of product development at Namco Bandai. “To make a long story short, everyone shook hands and said, ‘Yeah, we’re on it. It’s all good.’ When the deliveries were due and the stuff they were supposed to be doing wasn’t happening, I had to make a recommendation into Namco and say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t look like it’s going to look very well.’”(BottleRocket founder Jay Beard didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.)With quality issues continuing, Namco Bandai made the decision to pull Splatterhouse from BottleRocket in February 2009. Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai Namco Hauling awayWhen the news broke to the gaming press, an unnamed Namco Bandai representative, “At this time, we are not ready to discuss specific development details about the game and wish BottleRocket the best of luck in their future endeavors.”That same day, Namco Bandai brought a U-Haul truck to BottleRocket’s offices to collect development kits. Some on the team had no advance notice.“It was just a normal workday,” says Holty.
“Everyone goes to work and there’s a bunch of moving trucks in front of the company. Everyone’s like, ‘What’s going on?’”Former Namco Bandai associate producer Dan Tovar, who had been with the project from its earliest point, recalls that day: “What followed was one of the most unpleasant experiences I have had to date in my professional career.” Tovar continues, “There were grown men crying. ‘Hellish’ doesn’t quite summarize it.”. “We didn’t cancel the game. We fired the management.”“They pulled us all inside and said, ‘That paycheck you got today?
This is your last check, because we don’t have any money in the bank,’” says Dave Wilkins.Not all was lost for some members of the BottleRocket team, though. During the dev kit retrieval, Namco Bandai management handed out some business cards.
Splatterhouse wasn’t canceled — development was to continue, but now under the banner of Namco Bandai.“We think it was Jay who misled the studio,” adds Iwai. “Some of the artists were really good. Some of the game designers, too.”“The management spent the money; the kids didn’t,” says Robinson. “We didn’t cancel the game. We fired the management.”A month after the decision, Iwai stated Namco Bandai’s position publicly. BottleRocket lost Splatterhouse because of a “performance issue” with the team, Iwai said in, vaguely describing the internal problems.Two days later, BottleRocket sent out: “ Splatterhouse had been in development for over eighteen months and up to having the title taken away from us we had not missed any contractually defined milestones. So either there were no performance issues during that time frame or Namco’s management of the title was inept.”Asked now about his comments, Iwai says, “I knew I couldn’t go into details.
I know people tend to blame the publisher for canceling a project, but that’s not the case always. It was purely a performance issue.”.
Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai Namco To CarlsbadIn an attempt to continue cohesively, Namco Bandai hired a number of BottleRocket’s developers, forming a studio in Carlsbad, California, near BottleRocket’s San Diego location. The group would work together with Namco Bandai’s studio in Santa Clara, California, the team responsible for 2009’s Afro Samurai.Splatterhouse sat in limbo for three months as Namco Bandai formed the new Carlsbad studio, acquired equipment and settled in. The distance between Carlsbad and Santa Clara — more than 400 miles — created complications.“We were flying back and forth quite a bit just so we could maintain continuity and have team meetings,” says Holty.
“Plus, in the beginning, I had to go and teach all the tools to all the designers and artists, and get that whole team up to speed.”The new Carlsbad group needed to put together a full team. Roger Hector and others pulled a number of BottleRocket’s key members into the fold, including physics programmer Michael Seare, whom Hector tried to hire.“I’m not necessarily proud of what I did here, but at the time when Hector approached me, I had accepted an offer from Rockstar San Diego,” says Seare. “I was going to start working on a Monday. Hector contacted me twice over that weekend to discuss a number of details about establishing the Carlsbad studio, and I said yeah, I’ll do it.
That meant going into work at Rockstar on Monday and quitting.”Namco Bandai sought to keep the budget in check — having already paid for a year of development time — which meant tight schedules and heavy pressure.“It wasn’t like, ‘You have a year and a half to finish this game,’” says Wilkins. “It’s like, ‘Let’s see where you are in three months, and we might decide to kill it and we might not.’ So we busted our humps for three months to the milestone, and then, ‘It’s looking pretty good. Keep going.’”. This image contains sensitive or violent content Tap to display Splatterhouse (2010) concept art Bandai Namco Late-night salvage jobThe two teams began parsing what they could keep. BottleRocket hadn’t completed a usable amount of work. “There was the rough shell of a bunch of levels, but you could not play the whole thing front to back,” says Tovar. “Huge amounts of systems were not complete, and most importantly, it just wasn’t fun.” Saving any of that work meant reducing costs and time.
Robinson formed a plan.“The only way we could ship was if we created days without cutting features,” says Robinson. “How do you create days? Well, we had close to 90 street days of bugs, but only 62 days of bug days to cure. We were going to blast through this schedule in two, three months. What we’ll do is, I’ll stay up all night, every night. I’ll change the whole team schedules so that testing happens while everyone is asleep.“Everyone on the team drew a straw,” Robinson continues. “That straw meant you had to fix any bug in the game, and you had to be on call.
It was close to 20 of us. I would show up at 4, 5 o’clock, and I would produce my other games until 6 or 7.
Everyone would submit their last overnight build and I would play until the morning. As soon as I hit a bug, I’d call up whoever was in charge that day, they would run in, fix it, and I would start the play cycle again. We gained 22 days back.””There was an occasion, a few times, in three days I think I slept for three hours,” Chung recalls. “I remember just sleeping on the floor and taking a break.”. Some work from the BottleRocket days gave the team a reprieve during those long nights.“There was this weird concept art, back before we started, of this weird zombie-looking dude with a car battery strapped to his ass, and he was wearing a diaper,” says Wilkins. “When we would be grinding late hours, waiting on pizza to come and it’s 2 a.m.
To get a build done and everybody’s dragging ass, we would send that email out with that picture and ‘never forget,’ and you could just hear, all across the studio, everyone would just lose their mind laughing.”Keeping some of BottleRocket’s work created problems as well. To save time, Rick’s original animation rig remained. “You can see in the final game he’s got a really short bicep and his head’s a little bit big, and it’s all because we had to make that skeleton work,” says Wilkins.Splatterhouse also gained a cel-shaded art style, similar to what the internal team at Namco Bandai did with Afro Samurai. “At that time with Afro, we kind of led the industry in that research. We felt we could really push this agenda of ‘we own this art style,’” says Robinson.With added graphical fidelity, Splatterhouse also took on a new level of gore.
Rick could grab his opponents and perform grisly fatalities, ripping off heads and arms with blood spurting everywhere. Some at Namco Bandai Japan found the gore off-putting.“From Bandai or Namco’s management perspective, it might be too much,” says Iwai. “But I said, ‘You guys want to achieve global success.
The M-rated games market is such a huge market. If we are capable of going into the market, why don’t we?’ Some people didn’t like the M rating in the beginning, but somehow I was able to shut the noise down.”. Splatterhouse (2010) artwork Bandai Namco The $20 million bustSplatterhouse development continued for a year under the new long-distance arrangement, with heavy crunch and overnight schedules. That brought the total cost to roughly $20 million before Namco Bandai released Splatterhouse on Nov.
23, 2010.Asked if Splatterhouse did well financially, Iwai simply replies, “Unfortunately, not really.”“We missed a critical Halloween launch that many thought would have made a huge difference in the commercial success,” says Tovar.On Nov. 1, weeks before the game shipped, the Carlsbad studio closed — except for a single employee. Michael Seare stayed on as the lone staffer, waiting for final quality assurance approval for the PlayStation 3 version. “We did the best we could. What you got in the box at the end was 75 percent of what we going for.”“We hadn’t heard from Sony,” he says. “I think Namco realized it, because Hector called me again and asked me if I would remain on staff — just me — and if there are any last-minute bugs, fix and resubmit to Sony.
I’ve been through this before, and I knew in the past that it took more than one engineer to fix these bugs. Sometimes there were design issues, and I was petrified. But fortunately, a couple of days after talking to Roger, Sony came back and accepted. I was on staff for maybe a week longer than the rest of the crew.”Looking back, those speaking for this story share fond memories of the team around them, forming a positive outlook on the end product.“I don’t feel ashamed of it all, but I can’t look back on it without saying, ‘Boy, if we just had a little bit more time, we could have taken it up a notch,’” says Hector.“Even though it’s probably the lowest-rated game I worked on, in retrospect, when I think about its production, because of the limited resources, it felt like we built a tight camaraderie,” says Chung. “Everyone was proud to finish it considering the circumstances.”“We did the best we could,” says Wilkins. “What you got in the box at the end was 75 percent of what we going for. I wouldn’t trade that experience at all, even the BottleRocket days.
I met some lifelong friends there. Creatively, we were surrounded by some of the most talented guys and gals I ever worked with to this day.”“That game just didn’t have the tools to be polished the way it needed to be polished,” says Robinson. “Like most great opportunities, it just simply ran out of money.”As of this story posting, Splatterhouse sits at a 59 Metacritic score on PlayStation 3, and a 62 on Xbox 360. Yet for Roger Hector, Splatterhouse represents the unpredictability and turmoil of game design, and for him, that’s a sign of success.“Every game design project, if it doesn’t have troubles, it’s not trying hard enough,” says Hector.
Splatterhouse is series of games created. Players control the protagonist Rick Taylor as he fights against diabolical supernatural forces in a struggle to save the woman he loves (and, in Splatterhouse 3, his son). Rick has a constant companion throughout this freak show of demented demons: the Terror Mask, an ancient artifact that confers great and terrible powers upon anyone who wears it—and seems to have a.Namco released the first Splatterhouse in arcades; in the United States, its graphic violence sparked a media frenzy from, which got the game pulled from arcades.
The game's later release on the received some to avoid the same fate; later games did not get such treatment, as the relative obscurity of Splatterhouse spared the port and its sequels from the crosshairs of the early 1990s 'violence in video games' moral panic spawned. (That the first three Splatterhouse games featured no real human foes to beat up probably helped, too.). The first two Splatterhouse games feature 2D side-scrolling -style gameplay; Rick can splatter most enemies in one hit, but can only survive a few hits himself.
Splatterhouse 3 plays more like a -style beat-'em-up and includes a non-linear exploration element where players navigate a maze of rooms to reach a boss battle.Namco also published Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti ('Naughty Graffiti'), a and prequel for the that features versions of the game's characters and parodies of numerous horror films (and their associated tropes).The series sat dormant after Splatterhouse 3, and fans clamored for a new game for years. Namco Bandai delivered that game in 2010 with Splatterhouse, released for the and the. This remake/re-imagining of the first game works as a modern-day version of its 16-bit predecessors, with all that description entails (for example, if Rick takes a lot of damage, he loses massive amounts of skin and body parts until he can heal). Namco Bandai also included (including the uncut arcade version of the first game) as unlockable bonuses, which turned the disc into the ultimate Splatterhouse collection.
Splatterhouse fan-site has a load of information about the entire series and a collection of fan creations.The Splatterhouse series contains the following tropes:.: In the third game, you can find hidden rooms that leads to books that gives Rick an extra life.: There are sidescrolling segments in the 2010 remake.: The Terror Mask invokes this in the bad endings to the third game.: The third game of the original series has fun with the kind of situations that many adults are terrified of happening. Two of the game's objectives are to rescue Rick's wife, Jennifer, and their son, David. They can only be rescued by making it to the end of levels two and four respectively as quickly as possible. Depending on whether you save both of them, only one, or neither of them, the game ends on a positive note with Rick being reunited with his family, or results in one of three possible where either Rick is a widower who has to raise his son alone, Rick and Jennifer are bereaved parents, or Rick is left alone after losing both his wife and his son.: As the original game began life in the arcades, all levels in it contain a device to keep players from stalling, in the form of a slow-moving wall of glowing, rippling purple something that pursues you until you reach the boss. The Terror Mask: 'Rick. She doesn't have to die.
You can still save her. Only I can give you that power.
You need me.' Mask: David it sic that child.: The remake compared to the original trilogy.: The remake. The Terror Mask gets off on making quips about the stuff you kill.: The Terror Mask. Established in the remake, as according the original trilogy's very few dialogues and manuals, the mask is very clear on its primary goals and doesn't seem to crave fighting and killing as much as it does in the remake.: It's hard to find a series with more body horror than this one.
In fact, it's hard to find a single frame of a Splatterhouse game that doesn't have some kind of body horror in it. There is ◊. But that's about it.
Really, these games are SICK.: The Strange Zone (Stage X) in the third game, they're essentially bonus stages with no timer where you fight off some enemies and pick up some 1-Ups and power stones. Every time Rick completes the bonus stages, Rick consistently responds with wordless confusion.: The of the second game.
Also the one from the remake. This time more literally, as some of the bodies he's composed of will occasionally fall off, revive and charge at you.: In some areas of the remake you'll find a single, apparently ordinary mook all alone.
For some reason, it can kill you with one if you're not careful enough, even at full health.: Believe it or not, the 2010 game got a small bit of this; instead of the game's easy difficulty being called 'Pussy', Namco higher-ups made them change it because they felt it would be insulting to gamers. It was changed to 'Coward'. It's particularly odd because this is a game in which the Terror Mask constantly berates your character's reluctance or fear with lines like 'I'm sorry, did your vagina say something just now?' . In the second game of the original trilogy, it was made clear that Rick did in fact kill Jennifer and in the second game had to fight his way into the underworld and bring her back to life. The US version states that the creature from the first game wasn't her and she was trapped in the other house the whole time.
The Terror Mask was originally the 'Hell Mask' in Japan. In the first game, the Inverted Cross boss was reskinned into a monster head for the console ports.: Especially in the Remake. Justified, as Rick is swinging said weapons with unearthly power. Furthermore if they weren't breakable they'd be a. You can use that unearthly power to increase weapon durability but even that only works for so long. They also break in only one or two hits against enemies above a certain weight class regardless of how fresh they are (thankfully that single hit does full damage).: The Terror Mask in the remake is fond of doing this.
'See, that's the kind of shit that got us an M-rating.' West used the information given to him by to both prolong his life and bring back his dead wife Lenora. All alone.: The 2010 game features alternate masks for Rick to wear, such as the Retro Hockey Mask resembling the TurboGrafx-16 version, a masked based on Dia de Los Muertos, and a skull-like mask. There are also extra survival arenas available for purchase.: After you defeat Head Snake, the keeper of the gate to the Void in Splatterhouse 2, you see a huge, red mass being expelled from the passage.
It's the Ultimate Evil, and you fight it as the final boss later.: The original trilogy. Rick went through utter hell in his life via wandering through an abomination-filled haunted house, being forced to kill his girlfriend, racing against time when said demons and their leader invade his new home and family and prevent them from being killed or turned into mindless beast, and wreck his own mask for manipulating him so it could take over the world.
By the end of it, Rick is able to resume his newly built family in peace, with no more forces of evil attempting to ruin both the world and his personal life. And according to (Bandai) Namco, this is the canon ending for the original trilogy.: Biggy Man is a hard boss in the original game, but you can turn him into a cakewalk by carrying both shotguns into the fight, simply swapping them out repeatedly as you move and using low kicks to deal with the lesser enemies.: Pretty much everything, to some degree. The House itself, and some of the monsters from the second game counts.: Many enemies have a stronger counterpart, namely the Teratoid and Abhore have the Demon Teratoid and the Demon Abhore.: The 2010 revival has the original trilogy of Splatterhouse games as unlockable bonuses.: In the first two games. Every 30,000pts in the first game and 20,000pts. In the sequel respectively earns you an extra life.
/: The best and worst endings of the third game.: Aside from the ordinary hellish creatures from, things that attempt to kill Rick include random wildlife, furniture, household tools, his own reflection, his girlfriend/wife-to-be, and his son's teddy bear.: The Terror Mask in the remake is constantly trying to get Rick to admit he loves the power and strength it gives him.: Pretty much everything in this game series.: The Terror Mask. Although an evil artifact, it's willing to help Rick save his loved ones except in the third game of the original trilogy, where it shows its true colors.: In the remake, you can purchase skill upgrades that further enhances some of your existing moves.: Usually played straight in the third game, but when it comes to Stage 2. 'Alright, I beat the Giant Boreworm with (any time limit below 2 minutes) remaining, I— wait, JENNIFER DIED?!' .: The Terror Mask's deal in the remake is that he won't get off of Rick's face until Jen is safe in his arms. He doesn't come off, because it's not Jen in her body.: Demons kidnapped your girlfriend. Slightly less so in the 2010 remake.: One of the monsters in the remake is a colossal eye (complete with eyelids) blocking your way. Let's just say I'm God.
'Least the only god that's listening right now. What do I want? Ah, the same as any god. Little faith. For without faith, I am nothing. And without me.: The Mask in the remake has an amazing healing power. 'For a Dick, you are such a pussy!'
.: Done by the second boss in the first game via. It if it lands on you. The first and sixth bosses do the same with a hidden last enemy and acid blood, while Part Two has only the first boss doing this splashing you with gastric fluids.: The monsters you face in the original trilogy, ranging from ghouls, zombies, and hellish abominations. The remake has the Corrupted, hellish monsters summoned by Dr. West.: Batman9502 has done a Let's Play of during. Also has done one for.: with Necro, which is the energy of the dead.: The Splatter Siphon in the remake, which lets you drain blood from nearby enemies.: In the first two games, your hit points were presented as hearts, as in the actual organ.
The third game and the remake has a more straightforward gauge display, alongside a meter to show how much juice the Terror Mask has.: note And in case you're wondering, yeah, it's awesome.: Every time you go back to a checkpoint. Due to the difficulty, this can lead to long stretches of more loading than playing.: Dr.
West's wife, who Jennifer greatly resembles. Named Lenora, in case you didn't spot the metaphor.: Dr West in the remake.: The various 'Splatterkills' you can perform in the 2010 remake. One particularly one involves Rick shoving his hand up an creature's asshole and ripping out its intestines.: Most enemies are, to some extent. That, or the Terror Mask is just that powerful. Considering that the arcade version of the original game opens with Rick having to be saved from death by the Mask after he enters the mansion, the latter is likely the case.
Made all too clear in the remake. Rick without the mask is damn near sliced in half during the attack that leaves him dying; Rick with the mask is able to rip the same enemies to shreds with his bare fists.: A boss in the second game. He chucks beakers of incendiary chemicals. (In the Western version he's Dr. Mueller, a research partner of Dr. In Japan, he IS Dr.
West.). Doctor West in the remake.: In the first game, during the fight against the mutated Jennifer, she transforms back into her human form after being hit enough times, with her clothes literally reappearing out of nowhere. In Splatterhouse 3, whenever Rick transforms into his, his shirt rips off, but when he reverts, his shirt grows back.: Obtained from evidence from the manuals and games, it is revealed that the is the one thing responsible for summoning evil spirits and turning houses into massive horrifying fleshpiles. Apparently, it's a magnet for evil of all sorts. Even the Wanpaku Graffiti ending featured it coming to life, and laughing evilly while poltergeists proceeded to trash the studio.: The POW Meter, which is used for your Mutant Rick form. The 2010 has the Necro Meter, which is used for your Splatter Moves and Berserk mode. and: Both in the original and in the 2010 game, Rick must fight clones of himself generated by evil mirrors; only in the remake is the battle treated as a boss fight.: The 2010 remake has Clown Corrupted as enemies 'Phase Seven: Scream Park'.
Also reveals that Rick is afraid of clowns, which the Terror Mask, of course, has fun with.: Jennifer in the remake. You even get to collect some naked pictures of her throughout the remake.: The 2010 remake, released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.: In the third game, whether or not you complete certain stages before the time limit is up determines which ending you see.: The 2010 Splatterhouse remake is a softer museum example as beating this game earns the right to play the original 3 games, while also viewing extra art and information on them. It's basically a playable tour through the Splatterhouse franchise plus art and information. This is done as both a nostalgic reward for fans of the original series (especially as many wanted to play the uncensored game but never could) and to educate new players about the cool stuff that came before.:.: in the original game.: Dr. West in the remake.: Thanks to a, Rick was the reason Dr. West made a deal with The Corrupted in the first place.: Fail to save Jennifer in time in the third game, and you will be treated to a ◊ where Jennifer bares her fangs.
Quite literally.: The 2010 game is pretty hard, compared to other modern beat-em-ups. The very first room past the opening can kill you repeatedly on normal difficulty. Opponents don't have much, Rick needs only a few hits to die, and he isn't very good at crowd-clearing. In an inversion of this trope however, the 'Brutal' difficulty can be much easier compared to 'Savage', if you chose to carry them over. The classic games were no joke, either, with the first two Splatterhouse games working on arcade levels of fiendish.
Enemies, death obstacles and traps all worked to take you by surprise in a way that even tight reflexes might eventually fall to, forcing the player to have to learn the games more like a routine rather than be able to inch your way through them the old-fashioned way. The third game taking a to more of a brawler, however, came with the difficulty of getting the good ending.
Not only was pretty much every boss fight a, even if you tapped into the Terror Mask's, but the story-imposed in almost every stage meant you had to reach the boss and defeat them under the time limit or else Rick's family would meet a horrible fate in some way or another. Well, fuck you!Dr. West: No, Rick! FUCK YOU!.: Rick can decapitate enemies when he's using a machete. This Rick kills many of the bosses in the remake, most notably the Giant Boreworm. He can even do this with some of his Splatterkills.
Blue Hominis can do this too to Rick, which is obviously instant death for you.: In the older games, anything Rick did would gib regular enemies. In the remake, even the weak enemies can take a fair beating, but two special grab attacks - the arm rip grab and the held weapon grab will kill enemy mooks with a single use.: The Terror Mask itself, in the final level.: In the latest version Rick can have his right arm severed and still keep fighting. One of the creatures from the third game can even attack you with part of his skull missing.: Rick's sudden muscle gain in the beginning of the 2010 game breaks his leg initially. Half his skin is also displaced when.: With blood in the remake.
After killing boss of Stage IV in Splatterhouse 2, blood explodes onto the screen and then runs down on it.: Biggy Man seems to keep tabs on your moves. He'll even jump backwards if you try to dropkick him.: Splatterhouse 2 and 3 each have a password system to record the player's progress, although you only get your password if you lose all of your lives and get kicked into the Game Over screen.: Almost every door or trap in the 2010 game is powered and/or unlocked by massive doses of blood from the enemies you kill.
You also buy moves using blood points.: Those who pre-ordered the 2010 game at GameStop also gets a statue of the Terror Mask.: Rick does this to Dr. West in one of the 2010 game's trailers. During the last phase, Rick confronts Doctor West, and after revealing his big plan for revenge against Rick (for things West accidentally set in motion himself), Rick replies 'Yeah. Well fuck you.'
To which Doctor West shouts, '.: Especially the 2010 game.: All the mini-bosses and also the Giant Boreworm, who you have to fight (and some times behead) at least four times, if not more.: The new design of the Giant Boreworm, complete with fangs and a.: In the 1988 original, the concepts of Dr. West and 'West Manor' didn't exist until the game was ported to the TurboGrafx-16, after which they were firmly cemented as part of the canon and the central antagonists of the 2010 remake.: The blue lake and the green forest is a pleasant sight after escaping the gloomy mansion in Splatterhouse 2.: The Evil One, The Corrupted and the Terror Mask in the third game.: The 2010 game ends with Jennifer possessed by one of The Corrupted, complete with.:. A third of the fun in the games is to spot all references to famous horror movies (just for starters, and ). The Famicom spinoff Wanpaku Graffiti went ballistic on this, including references to (and parodies of), and many more. Perhaps the funniest shout out are the disembodied hands giving Rick the finger, straight out of. One of the heads circling the 'inverted cross' boss from the first game is the head of. The horror movie references are visibly obvious but the oddly detailed plot came from before it became trendy, mixed with bits of part 1.
'Show him why we call it 'SPLATTERHOUSE'.' .: Jennifer into a monster is a boss you have to kill in the first game.: In the sequel, Rick goes into Hell in order to save Jennifer's soul. AND HE ULTIMATELY SUCCEEDS.: In the first two games.: In the first game, Rick is dressed like a hospital patient. This is because originally, he was supposed to be an escaped psycho chasing Jennifer.
Him being a standard good guy and her actual boyfriend was a case of last-minute.: The first boss of the 2010 game is a demon that can heal himself and others, is capable of shaking off your combos and can't be killed by anything else than a Splatterkill.: One of West's narrations in Phase 9: The Ruined Heart, in the reboot seriously calls into question how long the Terror Mask has been manipulating people. 'For as I lay on the threshold to the eternal abyss, an angel spoke to me.
His message - 'She doesn't have to die.' '.:,.: The first boss of the first game is a group of overgrown leeches that attack in rapid succession from all sides.: The sixth level on the first game; also a, because of from the walls. In the remake, most of the interiors of the House in many levels are fleshy and alive. There are also the 'Mouth Guardians' (gigantic living maws that you must feed with monsters), Eye Guardians (Gigantic eyes) and the nucleus of the House, which this time is a gigantic heart.: Well, this example counts more as ' Around Trademarks'.
In the arcade version of the first game, the Terror Mask resembles the symbolic hockey mask of Jason Voorhees; in the TurboGrafx-16 port, Namco changed the color to red to likely prevent a lawsuit. The sequels returned the color of the mask to white(-ish), but altered the mask's design to be more skull-like. As a to this, one of the DLC masks in the 2010 game is a red hockey mask appropriately called the 'Retro Hockey Mask'.: In the remake, the Terror Mask reveals that Rick once got drunk at a party and slept with one of his college classmates. It uses this to advance the possibility that anyone can have an out-of-character moment, even the Mask itself.