Namco Bandai decided to try and revive their Splatterhouse game series, another 2D title making the jump to 3D.  In addition to the gore and gross-out fun, it was going to incorporate things like self-regeneration (like in Halo).  The game was given to BottleRocket, a fresh indie game developer.  Composed of people who left Sony's San Diego division (many of them worked on Mark Of Kri), they did Rise Of The Kasai and Xiaolin Showdown before getting this, an A list title that would put them on the map.  They also inked a deal with Brash Entertainment to develop a title for them (word has gotten out -- the game was based on the comic book character the Flash).

Things seemed to be progressing nicely, with Splatterhouse on track to go gold in March.  Then, in February, Namco Bandai suddenly yanked the project away from BottleRocket, citing performance issues.  Apparently, there's some heavy duty rumbling, because the COO of Namco Bandai's NA division, Makoto Iwai, issued a statement this week that it was just scheduling issues, that's all, and don't cast them as the bad guy.  The game will be finished internally by NB, by the same in-house staff that did their Afro Samurai game.  Hopefully, this means we won't see Slaughterhouse, an indie Atari 2600 game inspired by Splatterhouse, before we see the real thing.

The Flash game?  Brash kicked the bucket last year and is taking a lot of studios down with them.  Let's hope BottleRocket, which is still developing another title, doesn't join the others.