genDESIGN has celebrated a round anniversary of one of ICOs earlier games.

Regarding the video, the Japanese studio says we get a glimpse into the early development of ICO, initially made for PlayStation 2. This game was jointly developed by the now-defunct (Sony Computer Entertainment, now Sony Interactive Entertainment) Japan Studio and Team Ico. The latter was headed by Fumito Ueda, who later created Shadow of the Colossus and then The Last Guardian. He is also working on something that has not yet been announced.

According to genDESIGN, the video below was taken circa 1998 and was made for the development team to share the game’s concept with them. It led to a significant breakthrough, as Ueda found the light at the end of the tunnel that they had been looking for for a while because, at the time, they didn’t know what ICO would end up being. (And keep in mind that since this is a 1998 video, the PlayStation 2’s launch was still some two years away.)

Audiovisually, the video has some flaws. It has scanlines, plus it sounds noisy, and you can see the debug options, but the Japanese studio stressed that they didn’t want to alter or edit the footage because they wanted to give us the atmosphere of the time. Back in those days, the PlayStation 5 was merely a dream, along with tons of technology we got used to over the past two decades.

There is a slight twist to ICO, though. It was released in Japan on 2001 December 6 for PS2. Still, it was already available elsewhere before then, as it was released in North America on September 24. As was usual at the time, Europe was way behind, so the PAL conversion (60 Hz instead of 50 Hz) hit the shelves on 2002 March 22. The game also received a PlayStation 3 remaster along with Shadow of the Colossus from Bluepoint Games, now part of PlayStation Studios, in September 2011.

Source: Gematsu