Namco Bandai’s remake of the classic, ultra-violent Splatterhouse has had its release date pushed back into early 2010, according a statement:

“Namco Bandai Games America Inc. is hard at work on Splatterhouse. Development is in full swing and we are committed to bringing it to the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2010.

“This will give us time to polish and incorporate all the content to deliver a top notch game worthy of this classic video game franchise.”

Splatterhouse, a 3rd-person brawler re-imagining of the series of gory arcade and home console games, was announced to be in development over a year ago, at the time with 3rd party developer, Bottlerocket.

After a bit of legal wrangling, development on the game then shifted in-house, with the developers of Afro Samurai (which includes ex-Bottlerocket members) handling the game.

Namco also explained away the non-appearance of Splatterhouse at E3 this year by saying that they wanted the team to “focus on making the game, not just a demo” to be shown at the expo, which would have taken up valuable development time.

At least they’re thinking straight, even if the game doesn’t end up being superb.