one of Japan's premier Famicom researchers turned up an unseen Namco promo VHS with five minutes of footage from SPLATTER WORLD, an unreleased Famicom RPG and sequel-of-sorts to Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, that was absent from all the common online listings & books written on unreleased FC games.

The video had it dated for release on March 19, 1993 and the footage and associated material certainly suggests it was close to being done, if not complete, so who knows why it didn't come out—the author speculates that it was probably just a case of the game not receiving enough orders from retailers, which seems entirely plausible for such a late Famicom game.

What's also interesting is that the characters and designs seen in Splatter World clearly match those seen in the art that's briefly shown in this Namco Museum of Art video on the Splatterhouse series, which begs the question: if they have the key art, do they still have the ROM?

(The author did ask one of their ex-Namco contacts about the game, in order to try to ascertain any further info on who might've made the game, but all they could offer were vague memories about seeing and possibly test-playing the game at some point.)

Some info gleaned from the trailer:

• one of the key battle mechanics was "Chanelling", ie summoning the souls of preiously-defeated enemies and having them possess the summoner in order to perform a special attack

• defeated enemies could revive as zombies and continue fighting, and defeated party members would be zombified, which allowed them some basic actions but disabled spirit-based attacks and channeling

• the two recruitable party members shown in the video are the Krueger-esque traveling guitarist "Greddy" (shoulda been "Shreddy"!) and the goopy powerhouse "Melton" (who you see getting goopified in the footage); the key art shown in the Namco Museum of Art video shows a third party member, but they're not shown/named in the PV

• The game kicks off with a recap of Wanpaku Graffiti and a reprise of the final boss battle in RPG form; afterwards, Rick & Jennifer return home only to find the town crawling with zombies, and see a TV broadcast from Dr. West (of West Mansion, the setting of the original game) pledging to overrun the world with horrific creatures