With the increasing importance of relationships between developers and fans, it's become more common for fans to get a peek behind the curtain of the development of some of the biggest games the entire industry. This is in no small part thanks to preservationists and documentary efforts such as Noclip and projects such as Raising Kratos, but sometimes it comes from the developer itself. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Ico's Japanese release, developer genDESIGN (formerly Team Ico) reveals the long mythicized Ico concept pitch video.

Ico is an action-adventure game initially released on the PlayStation 2 in 2001, developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico. The game follows a horned young boy named Ico and a slighly older girl named Yorda as they attempt to escape a mysterious castle. Its designer/director, Fumito Ueda, would go on to coin the game development philosophy of "design-by-subtraction," which would inspire his own future games such as Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, and other works such as thegamecompany's Journey and Playdead's Inside.

RELATED: Why Ico Is Still Unforgettable, 20 Years Later

Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu conducted a special dedicated entirely to the legacy of Ico, in which it interviewed several influential creators who were inspired by the game including Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki, NieR creator Yoko Taro, and even the likes of film director Guillermo del Toro and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

As a way of celebrating the occasion itself, Ueda's current studio, genDESIGN, has released the original concept pitch video sent to Sony Computer Entertainment back in 1998, when Ico was originally envisioned as a PS1 title. While Ico would undergo a tumultuous development phase, eventually transitioning to the PlayStation 2 in 1999, this video shows that the original vision for the game was not squandered during its lengthy development cycle. Some of the locations featured in the concept video even show up in the main game.

The biggest differences between this concept video and the final game are, of course, the major visual improvements it would see during the transition to the PlayStation 2, and the design of Yorda, who originally wore a more contemporary blouse and shorts combo. The video is set to the song "Summer Holiday 1999" by Scottish indie pop artist Momus, which the team used to set the tone for the game. Ultimately, the beloved soundtrack would be composed by Michiru Oshima.

While the release of this video is a big surprise for fans of genDESIGN's games, the video description mentions another long-discussed concept video that is set to Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" and mentions that this video was made during the game's transition to the PlayStation 2. Hopefully genDESIGN will release this second concept video in the near future, as for now, it's most likely busy on its next title, a multi-platform project set to be published by Epic Games.

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