Bottlerocket devs recruited by Namco to finish Splatterhouse

Apparently Namco Bandai's problem wasn't with the people making "Splatterhouse" at Bottlerocket. It was the management, or at least its deal with them.

According to a source close to the project, and several others familiar with the situation, Namco Bandai has quietly opened a new office in San Diego to finish production on its game "Splatterhouse" and recruited between 10 and 20 designers, artists, programmers, producers, and other staff from Bottlerocket Entertainment to work on the game.

Remember that Bottlerocket was the original developer on the game, but in February, publisher Namco Bandai took the game away from it and canceled their deal for an unspecified "performance issue," according to Makoto Iwai, COO of the company's American operation.

In the meantime, work has continued on "Splatterhouse at Namco Bandai's internal team that made "Afro Samurai." But switching developers is a difficult process since there's no internal memory of why a game is the way it is, what went wrong in the past, and so on. Getting the game out by later this year, as promised, would be difficult.

So Namco apparently has a solution: Re-hire the key folks who were making the game. Many were of couse available since Bottlerocket has been in financial straits, first because Brash went bankrupt, killing "The Flash" (and likely leaving Bottlerocket, like many other developers, in the hole for hundreds of thousands of dollars), and then because of "Splatterhouse."

As I reported yesterday, Bottlerocket has now been tapped by Genius Products to finish production of "Scratch: the Ultimate DJ." But for the past few months it has been without an assignment and even that new game likely isn't enough to keep all the folks working on "Flash" and "Splatterhouse" employed.

So when Bottlerocket couldn't afford to keep many of them, it's little wonder many on the "Splatterhouse" team took Namco Bandai's offer to finish the project they started.

Of course, we still don't know exactly why Namco canceled its contract with "Bottlerocket" and whether its plan was nefarious in any way, or it's simply executing a necessary backup plan. Either way, it's clear it wasn't entirely unhappy with the work being done at Bottlerocket since it's hiring many of their employees to finish the game. The unspecificed "performance" problem must have had to do with the developer's management, or the terms of the deal the publisher had with them.

Namco Bandai reps didn't respond to a request for comment. Bottlerocket CEO Jay Beard declined to comment.