Dead to Rights: Hell to Pay (PS2, PSP, PC, Xbox)

2004 Namco Hometek

Platforms: PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PSP

The original Dead to Rights was a breakout hit for Namco Hometek in 2002, earning several awards and nominations. Riding on that success, the studio set its sights on an even bigger and bolder sequel.

Development on Dead to Rights 2 kicked off almost immediately after the release of Dead to Rights, with a planned 2004 release. Originally titled Dead to Rights 2: Hell to Pay, the game aimed to deliver an even darker, grittier story – once again putting players in the shoes of hardboiled cop Jack Slate and his loyal K-9 companion, Shadow.

This time, Jack finds himself entangled in a deadly conspiracy while battling to save his friend, Preacher Man Jones. And if there’s one thing Jack Slate doesn’t do, it’s sit back while a friend suffers.

In the November 2003 issue of Game Informer, the magazine sat down with producers Andre Emerson and Mike Kennedy to discuss the highly anticipated Dead to Rights 2: Hell to Pay. Emerson emphasized that several core elements were being significantly upgraded, including the combat system, visuals, and even Jack Slate’s canine companion, Shadow, who was set to play a more integral role in the sequel.

But just as things were shaping up, disaster struck. Namco of Japan abruptly pulled the plug on the project, shifting its focus toward outsourcing development to external studios – leaving Hell to Pay buried before it ever had the chance to deliver on its promise.

At this stage, Dead to Rights 2 was still planned as a direct sequel, though its story had undergone a strange change. Jack Slate was no longer fighting to save his friend; instead, the plot shifted focus to protecting a mysterious girl.

But this version, too, was scrapped, and with time running out, key elements were hastily downgraded to push the game across the finish line. When Dead to Rights 2 finally launched, it was no longer a sequel – it had been rebranded as a prequel, only to receive a lukewarm reception from both critics and players.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage what little remained of Dead to Rights 2: Hell to Pay, Mike Morishita, Pierre Roux, and Mike Kennedy attempted to revive elements of the original vision only by making a PSP spin-off. Unfortunately, their efforts were fruitless.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning failed to make an impact, struggling both commercially and critically. With that, the last remnants of the original Dead to Rights 2 were lost – marking the end of what could have been a truly ambitious and fantastic sequel.

Early screenshots from IGN, Eurogamer, and GameSpot initially suggested that Dead to Rights: Reckoning was simply an enhanced port of the PS2 version—a common practice for companies to do at the time. However, it soon became clear that Reckoning was Namco Hometek’s last-ditch effort to salvage what remained of the franchise.

Evan Hanley unearthed an interview where story writer Mike Kennedy explained:

“That decision led to the shutdown of Dead to Rights 2: Hell to Pay [which itself was looking awesome. Well over half-done. Bits of it showed up in the farmed-out sequel and PSP spin-off, but that’s a whole other story].”

Senior Producer and Co-Director Pierre Roux later elaborated in email with me, saying:

“Mike (Morishita, who was a designer on DTR2 internally), tried to ‘recover’ the license while we were doing external development by creating a PSP version, truer to the original. I think it was better, but if I recall, I was leaving Namco at the time…”

In the end, Dead to Rights: Reckoning failed to make an impact, commercially or critically. Sales figures remain unclear, but one thing is certain—the original vision for Dead to Rights 2: Hell to Pay was lost.

FRANK: “In February 2025, lead programmer of Dead to Rights: Reckoning got in touch to share details of the development, which gives a bit of context about why it didn’t quite hit the mark and also about its fascinating origins:”

“So as far as I recall, it started life as another cancelled project – 100 Bullets, the comic book adaptation. I believe we were going to tackle the PSP port of the Xbox/PS2 version being developed in-house by Acclaim. Rebellion managed to get hold of the PSP SDK before the hardware was even ready, so work started with an emulator running on PC.
It ran disappointingly slowly compared to the PS2, but we were told the hardware would be 10 times faster, which didn’t really come true (especially after it was downclocked to 222MHz). Guardband clipping was a real pain too, forcing us to subdivide large polygons to avoid them disappearing when the camera got too close (on later games we got the engine to clip them on the CPU).
We hadn’t got very far when Acclaim imploded. We re-tooled the game into a one-level demo called “Assassin 8″, featuring a Max Payne/John Woo-style protagonist in a Las Vegas casino, with slot machines that would spew coins when they were shot. That demo was shopped around until Namco saw it and thought it would make a good basis for a Dead to Rights port on PSP.
As we were aiming to be among the launch titles on PSP (in the US and EU) we had a very ambitious timeline – just 3 months of development. Cutscenes were thrown together with a handful of stock animations and subtitles. The dog mechanics were stripped down to a simple button press triggering a takedown animation – no time to implement AI for Shadow. We did manage to squeeze in some great motion captured disarms, and I was please to get the diving takedown mechanic in.
Somehow we had time to do a very basic multiplayer too, although the lock-on targeting meant there wasn’t much skill involved. One feature that sadly never made it into the shipping game was the Shadow multiplayer skin. Watching a freakish dog-man dual-wielding while diving through the air was a real highlight of the development. Thankfully we kept the Big Head cheat – my tribute to classic Sega games.
Towards the end of development we had to wait for Namco’s office in California to finish their working day, meaning lots of very late nights in our Oxford office. The only consolation was that they gave us a copy of Katamari Damacy (never released in Europe), so we whiled away the evenings rolling up everything in sight.”

FRANK: “Just a quick note: our friends at Unseen64 also have a page on this game, featuring many of the same screenshots, as Yassine has also uploaded them there too recently.”

With thanks to Evan Hanley for information and shots, Kim Randell for sharing recollections about Dead to Rights: Reckoning. Additional shots and scans from Archive.org, Gamespot and Riot Pixels. Page-setting by Frank Gasking.