Update []:
Splatter World is now playable in English, thanks to the efforts of the fan translation community.
"Splatterworld is several things," says Aeon Genesis, the entity behind the translation. "First, it is a cutesy RPG spinoff of Namco's Splatterhouse property. It's a sequel to the Splatterhouse Wanpaku Graffiti cutesy platformer on the Famicom, which was never released outside of Japan. It's a parody of horror films and loves to poke fun at them. It's also a prototype. The game was never commercially released, and was only made available online on Halloween night this year (2025). Naturally, I jumped right on it."
Aeon Genesis adds:
"As a note/content warning/trigger warning the game does contain depictions of three famously nasty dictators from history, including one from last century that I'm sure everyone with any decency will cringe at. Not a part of the story, but part of the gameplay as summonable spirits. In the interests of historical accuracy and preservation these have not been altered, but I do want to be upfront about this with anyone who plays the patch. Forewarned is forearmed."
Original Story: Namco's Splatterhouse series began life in the arcades before transitioning to consoles with its direct sequels (both on Sega Genesis / Mega Drive) and its Japan-only spin-off, Splatterhouse - Wanpaku Graffiti.
That cute Famicom title was intended to get an RPG sequel of its own, named Splatter World, which was intended to launch in March of 1993 but was ultimately cancelled.
It's not known why this happened, but promotional materials were being distributed to Japanese retailers at the close of 1992, so the game was clearly very close to being finished.
Splatter World has been a highly sought-after title for some time, and we experienced a Halloween miracle at the end of last week when the game was dumped and released online.
As reported by the Splatterhouse fan site West Manison, the ROM was uploaded to 4chan. It currently only works on the emulator FCEUX, which is apparently due to its use of an obscure Namco mapper.
However, it's surely only a matter of time before hackers make it compatible with other emulators.