Listed were the publisher’s top five-selling games for the quarter ending June 30, 2009 (as in, only those sold during that three-month period, not lifetime sales). Those expecting Nintendo-like numbers will be disappointed, but those who love Afro Samurai – or just numbers in general – will be thrilled!

When Namco Bandai yanked the modern-day Splatterhouse from developers BottleRocket, it was met with boos and hisses from the angry internet mob. But Namco’s Makoto Iwai says the publisher wasn’t trying to be evil.

“Basically, the only reason why publishers pull the project out from the developer is when the developer isn’t really meeting the requirements,” Iwai tells Gamasutra in a new interview. Such was the case with BottleRocket, with the Namco Bandai EVP noting that a “performance issue” was to blame.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of Splatterhouse is now rumoured to be in the hands of the team that developed Afro Samurai, the first game to appear under the publisher’s Surge label. Iwai tells Gamasutra that, despite some “brutal reviews” for the licensed action game.

“The team did a great job with the limited amount of time, which allowed them to make improvements up to the last moment,” Iwai commented. “But again, this is the very first internal project that we have started as a newly born Namco Bandai Games America.”

Let’s hope that Surge’s next game will be more fondly remembered.

Q&A: Namco Bandai’s Iwai Talks Tricky Topics In Western Markets [Gamasutra]

Hip-hop sensibilities and anime style clash in Afro Samurai, a hack and slash brawler based on the cult-hit animated television series.

Afro Samurai follows the story of Afro, a samurai on a life-long quest to avenge his father’s death, set against the backdrop of a futuristic feudal Japan, where traditional Japanese sensibilities mingle with hip-hop culture. The game loosely follows the storyline from the animated series, following the Samuel L. Jackson-voiced Afro as he travels the land encountering interesting new people, generally killing them in spectacularly bloody fashion.

Afro Samurai is Namco Bandai’s first release under their Surge publishing brand, geared at releasing games that appeal to the western world’s particular palette. Is Afro Samurai a game fit to launch a new label?

Loved
A Work of Art: By far the most striking aspect of Afro Samurai is the art style. A combination of water-brushed backdrops and cross-hatched cel-shading give the game a very unique and stylized look that is hard to covey in words. In a way it reminds me of the hand-painted look of Capcom’s Okami, albeit a darker, grittier version.

Slice and Dice: Combat in Afro Samurai is quite visceral and highly satisfying, at least once you put aside the notion that this is just a generic hack and slash title. Landing punches, light attacks, and strong attacks builds up your focus meter, which allows you to perform focus moves. Time slows to a crawl, the screen turns white, and if you time it just right you wind up slicing through whatever is in the path of your sword, be it arm, leg, head, or torso. Lining up multiple enemies for a wide-sweeping focus attack is as satisfying as anything I’ve experienced in the genre.

The Got-Damned Voice Acting: The excellent voice cast from the anime returns for the video game adaptation, with stellar performances from Kelly Hu, Ron Perlman, and – of course – Samuel L. Jackson. As the voice of Afro’s “travelling companion” Ninja Ninja, Jackson delivers some of the raunchiest dialogue I’ve ever heard, and he delivers it damn well. Just make sure you don’t play it around anyone’s mother, or things could get really awkward.

A Little Decapitating Music: If the anime Samurai Champloo taught me anything, its that hip hop music and samurai swords go together inexplicably well. I often found myself moving along to the music as I played (I would never call it dancing). Where the soundtrack truly shines is during the game’s big set-piece battles, where the rhythm of the background music almost seems to guide your every move.

Hated
Slaughter, Rinse, Repeat: As entertaining as the combat in Afro Samurai is, repetition does set in from time to time, particularly in portions of the game where you kill enemy after enemy, desperately hoping that the next one is the last and you can move on. As frustrating as that can be, you’ll also find yourself in areas where you wish enemies would just pop up to make things a little bit more interesting. For a game that focuses on the rhythm and flow of combat, the enemy flow can be annoyingly inconsistent.

Cheap-Ass Boss Fights: Boss battles in Afro Samurai have two settings – ridiculously easy or throw your controller at the screen shouting obscenities difficult. Things start off simple, with Afro needing only to block until he can get a few slices in, but soon you’ll find yourself facing the flamethrower guy, also known as the f***ing flamethrower bastard. While similar games will at least hint at the strategy needed to take down a more difficult boss, Afro Samurai gets you used to fighting one way and then hits you with a guy you can’t fight that way.

Platforming Done Wrong: The developmental focus for Afro Samurai was clearly the combat, as the platforming feels as if it were thrown together at the last minute, simply to provide a break in the action. The movement controls that flow so well during battle don’t work nearly as well when trying to clear a jump or navigate some of the game’s more labyrinthine levels, and the aforementioned camera issues just make it worse.

Not being all that familiar with the source material, I began playing Afro Samurai expecting to experience yet another sub-par anime tie-in that injected characters from the show into as basic a game as the developer possibly could in order to make a quick buck. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a beautifully rendered game with an involving storyline and compelling characters, all wrapped around a fighting engine that is completely satisfying, both in complexity and sheer bloody brutality. At times its pacing falters and frustration begins to set in, but then the fighting music kicks in and suddenly it’s all worth it.

If you can manage to slice your way past the game’s more pressing problems, you’ll find that Afro Samurai has more than enough style and substance to make up for its shortcomings, delivering a solid, visceral hack and slash experience that’s sure to satisfy the violent psychopath lurking in all of us.

Afro Samurai was developed by Namco Bandai and published by Surge for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in North America on January 27 and will be released in Australia on April 2 for $109.95. Played PlayStation 3 version to completion.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ

The RZA is in Wu-Tang. And the Wu-Tang Clan ain’t, if you must be reminded, nothin’ to fuck with. So when the RZA needs a 360 to game on, he doesn’t game on no 60GB.

No, Bobby Digital is given, as you can hear on this clip, a dev kit. Just so the dude can do a little research for his Afro Samurai marketing junket. A $10,000 dev kit! Oh, to be rich and famous, and have dev kits delivered to my house, and be paid to rate games not on a scale of “loved and hated”, but on a scale that goes all the way up to shoobadoop.

[Image]

Namco Bandai Games christens their new western games division Surge with the release of Afro Samurai for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, based on the Spike TV anime starring Mr. Samuel L. Jackson.

Afro Samurai combines a hip hop vibe and music with a futuristic take on feudal Japan, creating an atmosphere that is equal parts mystic and urban. Now Namco Bandai Games hopes to take the unique feel of the cult hit series and carry it over to the video game world with an action-packed retelling of the anime’s story.

Have they succeeded, or will they face the wrath of one bad motherf***er?

IGN
The story told in Afro Samurai isn’t a sequel to the popular anime but more of a re-imagining of the origin we all know and love. As a child, Afro witnesses the murder of his father — a badass swordsman — in a duel for the No. 1 headband, which is basically the symbol of the greatest fighter on the planet. From there, Afro focuses on getting the No. 2 headband and avenging his father. On this journey, he’ll make friends, make love, and make a whole lot of people die thanks to his trusty katana. The story itself is solid and intriguing, and it makes a somewhat decent appearance in the game, although if you have never seen the show, the emotional impact and the finer points of the story will be lost on you.

GameSpot
At the forefront of (the game’s vibe) is Afro Samurai’s combat, which cribs from most games of its type. You can issue weak and strong attacks, kick your enemies around, and string these three basic moves into a variety of combos. You’ll spill a lot of blood using these simple actions, but if you really want to punish your acrobatic foes, it’s better to enter focus mode and watch the guts fly. With a pull of the trigger, you can slow down time, adjust your blade’s trajectory a bit, and lop heads, digits, or entire limbs off of your smack-talking enemies. You have to charge up focus mode by landing combos, but you will never go without the ability for long, and the resulting mix of old-fashioned button mashing and focus-powered slaughter is satisfying and fun.

Gamepro
While the game’s faithfulness to the show is refreshing, the storytelling is rather inconsistent. I found myself lost from time to time as I ventured through Afro’s disturbed memories. The platforming segments are also schizophrenic in their difficulty-they’re either insultingly easy or obscenely difficult. Much in the vein of the Prince of Persia series, Afro can wall-run and leap across ledges in certain environments, but with clunky detection as well as clipping issues when it comes to some of Afro’s more difficult acrobatic pursuits, the game just becomes plain frustrating in an extreme trial and error manner.

TeamXbox
All of the pieces of the gameplay puzzle appear to be here, but often times these bits feel strewn atop a table rather than ordered, glued together and framed. For instance, the HUD-less design of Afro Samurai obviously allows its style to shine through in as many instances as possible, but there will be times when you simply want more information, such as the location of your next checkpoint locale (rather than having to rely upon the “Ninja Ninja” GPS–basically, Sam Jax barking commands to your next route) or a little more clue as to how power-ups are affecting Afro’s battlefield prowess.

OXM
And the camera isn’t always on your side, swinging loosely during integral boss fights and often settling in the wrong position at the wrong time. It’s not so abusive that’ll you’ll be driven to tears, but with all the high-quality razzledazzle going on with Afro’s lovely looks, hip-hop beats, and sophisticated revenge tale, it’s too bad the spotless presentation doesn’t bleed seamlessly into every aspect of its gameplay and mechanics. Yet, Afro Samurai persisted in mesmerizing us. And really, with Sam Jackson spouting lines like “That girl puts the two ‘asses’ in ‘assassin’” in feudal Japan, how can we resist?

The two asses in assassin? Might have to buy this despite the average reviews.

Kotaku AU Note: Afro Samurai is out now in North America, but isn’t due until April in Australia.

And here I thought novelty celebrity phone messages were a thing of the past. Not so for Game Crazy, who have Samuel L. Jackson reminding customers to pre-order Afro Samurai.

Sure he doesn’t quite pronounce Namco Bandai correctly, but he doesn’t need to. He’s Samuel L. Jackson, and when he tells you to go pre-order the game at Game Crazy so you can get a little figurine of the character he portrays in the anime, well then by damn you better do it. When he tells you to keep him in your pocket…well you do that to. Then, when you realise you just put a tiny Samuel L. Jackson armed with a sword in your pocket, it’s too late.

Remember kids, never let Samuel L. Jackson near your genitals with a sword. It just doesn’t make sense.

Thanks Mexfreak86 for passing this along!

Here’s a trio of new videos from Namco Bandai Surge’s upcoming cutting-edge, genre-defining game targeted at satiating the appetite of western gamers, Afro Samurai.

I love the art style. I love the music. The gameplay looks pretty interesting, to say the least. I’m a bit put off by the game being released under a label that eschews a name I trust for the name of a long-dead and sorely missed carbonated beverage in the name of appealing to my western tastes. Yes I know Coca-Cola has put out Vault, but it’s not the same damn thing.

Samuel L. Jackson wouldn’t put up with this bullshit.

According to Namco Bandai’s Andrew Lelchuk: “Surge presents a significant milestone for Namco Bandai as it personifies our commitment to deliver compelling content for the discriminating player who is looking for games that are not only groundbreaking but also push the envelope.”

The first title to wear the Surge brand is Afro Samurai. Other Surge titles are expected next year.

Namco Bandai’s new “Surge” [CVG via Edge]

The Surge label, according to Namco Bandai, is “dedicated to providing cutting-edge, genre-defining games that are targeted at satiating the appetite of western gamers” just like you. The first appetite sating game that will cut edges and define genres is hyper-violent Afro Samurai video game, due in January. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title is being developed by a team built from the ground up by Namco Bandai, which may have contributed to the new identity.

More titles under the Surge label are slated for 2009. We’ll assume they will be logo appropriate in the electrifying edginess and style. Press release, which is making me thirsty for a citrusy soda, is after this.

NAMCO BANDAI GAMES ANNOUNCES NEW ‘SURGE’ PUBLISHING LABEL

SURGE Represents Robust Line of Titles and Audience Expansion

Santa Clara, Calif., (December 4, 2008) – Leading video games publisher and developer NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., today unveiled the formation of SURGE™, a new studio and publishing label dedicated to providing cutting-edge, genre-defining games that are targeted at satiating the appetite of western gamers. SURGE will deliver quality interactive entertainment across a wide assortment of categories and platforms.

“SURGE presents a significant milestone for NAMCO BANDAI as it personifies our commitment to deliver compelling content for the discriminating player who is looking for games that are not only groundbreaking but also push the envelope,” said Andrew Lelchuk, executive vice president of sales and marketing at NAMCO BANDAI Games America, Inc. “Through passion and innovation, SURGE will complement our portfolio of established franchises and intellectual property while positioning the company as a creative force.”

Afro Samurai®, the high-style title that blends urban hip hop culture with traditional Japanese aesthetics, will be the first game to launch under the new label when it is released on January 27, 2009. Additional IPs currently in development and slated for 2009 will also be published under the SURGE label.

For more information about Afro Samurai and other NAMCO BANDAI Games products, please visit: http://www.namcobandaigames.com.

After wrapping up their sword play, the group performed a traditional Japanese blessing that involved cutting things with swords and shouting by everyone, including the press audience. Sword blessing and shouts above. Live Action Fro on the jump.