Ico / Shadow of the Colossus re-release for the PS3

As that cable guy would say "get er done!"

Were these games popular enough to warrant a re release? God of War is prety high profile.

SOTC could use it, that game was too big for PS2's britches.


Yes.

Yeah, these games were not as mainstream as the GoW series, but they had quite the following for each game. Come to think of it, if people were polled worldwide to choose either an ICO/SOTC rerelease or GoW/II rerelease, I'm almost certain that ICO/SOTC would win.

This would be awesome!!!

I'll pray every night now for it to be true

I ran this quote through a fairly complicated piece of internet machinery to translate what this guy was really saying. The bold text above has been translated for your convenience and may not actually represent his intention as there are known language barriers to contend with in the translating process.

No matter the reason, I'd like to see this happen too. There's no way possible for a remaster/recode of some good games to be a bad thing.

I was hoping this would happen! I'd like to play through them before The Last Guardian comes out and it'd just be nice to have playable copies of these great games since my PS3 isn't BC.

The thread title probably should say "possible" or "rumor."

I really hope this happens. I haven't played SOTC yet, and might hold off getting it a little longer to see if a re-release comes.

Even better news if Kotaku is correct. Apparently there will be a meeting with Sony to discuss the idea.

http://kotaku.com/5368694/shadow-of-...sing-ps3-ports

later games squeezed as much out of the system as possible and were somewhat coded in the PS2's assembly language. Might not be very simple rewriting the rendering and other code.

This is going to come down to a time and money thing.

I am a huge fan of Team Ico, but I imagine that the scope of such a project would need to be limited in a number of ways that would make it unlikely.

1) Team Ico: the team probably wouldn't do the work since it would delay The Last Guardian's release (and the revenue that would justify keeping them alive at Sony Japan). So at best, I'd hope they would be available to any resources Sony hired to do the port to guide them and I would hope they would give final approval on the effort.

2) Timeline: it would be advantageous to release SotC and/or Ico on PS3/blu-ray before or immediately around the launch of The Last Guardian. No release date has been announced, but the hope is that it'll be 2010 since it's been 4+ years since their last release. This is completely unknown, so maybe #1 could be reversed, but I think it unlikely.

3) Porting and remastering: the game engine plus the graphic assets would probably need a lot of work to get onto PS3.

The graphics and animation were built only for the PS2, so unless the team did a good job at writing portable or maintainable, documented code (unlikely since they were trying to extract as much performance as possible), it'll be a considerable effort to port. Having said all of this, it would be easier to make PSN releases with the PS2 graphics.

I'd prefer the graphic assets get recreated for High Def, but that's a luxury that costs money and effort so that would be potential for tradeoffs.

4) Budget: depending on the projected success and marketing around the Last Guardian, maybe the effort to outsource the port and reap the additional sales for SotC/Ico rerelease or Blu-ray or port to PSN could be rolled into an existing budget. I think everyone would agree that the existing Team Ico audience today is smaller than the GOW audience, but could The Last Guardian outshine and outsell GOW to change the balance? I don't think that is likely, but I could be wrong.

So the combined scope of resources, timeline, porting+remastering, and budget all feel to me like a lot of constraints dragging on the full blown realized re-release of Ico and/or SotC. The smaller effort to port to PSN is more likely.

I'd be happy with just SotC remastered on the PS3, I'd buy it! It's on my top 5 games of all time, but so many of the textures struggle when upscaled to 1080p on my 60GbPS3.

I do hope that they can do this and do it right! Maybe they can hire me as an outside producer. :~)

P.S. I think TyrantII and I agree.

I found this fan art for the PS3 cover on the Internet...

There's also the upcoming SOTC movie. That could also play in the favor of a re-release. It's probably a long way off though.

You sure about that? I know the Ico games have a large cult following but I doubt its winning a poll. Most people never heard of SOTC until Adam Sandler played it in Reign on Me.

If anyone is interested, people have been working hard on modifying the game (able to move/change parameters of camera, objects, etc. while running the game on a PC running the PS2 emulator) and separate effort has created a 3-D viewer that can load and process the game maps, models, and character animations.

It is amazing how much technology from OpenGL and other graphics libraries can be repurposed to make such a viewer; it shows us how much of the production pipeline for games is built on these technologies, libraries, and APIs.

This has opened the doors to potentially modifying the game assets/textures/geography and giving us a HD version under emulation? Who knows? I'm a geek about this stuff, but I found it exciting that there is any new development with one of my favorite games.

I think it points to the feasibility of porting the PS2 engine to the PS3 and updating the assets to give us SotC HD, but it doesn't point to how many resources would be needed to do so. GoW Collection on PS3 is an indicator of what could be done.

It has laid to rest some questions: there is no 17th colossus or alternate ending.

It has revealed some answers: there were some more time attack reward items, there are two Shrines of Worship, there is no Ico castle in the background visible from the bridge, nothing else is hidden behind symbols, cave entrances, and other doorways in the landscape, you can explore some of the cut scene areas.

It has revealed some development changes: the Shine was once climbable to the top, there is an entire dam area stuck far in the mountains that wasn't completed but can be visited.

Finally, it has shown us how masterfully beautiful and detailed the work on this "world" has been. I really can not wait for The Last Guardian, which is rumored to be released during the holidays at the end of this year.

Examples are on youtube; look for: "dormin editor" and "sotc mod".

I only played the demo of ICO, but was pretty impressed and wish I had gotten that game.

I haven't played Shadow of the Colossus yet.

I would love it if they did a re-release for the PS3.

I was about to reply, "just get a copy. They're cheap and easy to find." Then I saw that they're going for at least $35 on Amazon. Bummer.

Used to be much cheaper. It's not actually a "collector's item" since there are more than enough copies to go around. Just people bumping up prices because of slightly increased demand (similar to what happened with FF7). Not exorbitant, but probably worth waiting to see if Sony releases a downloadable version or HD revamp.

Also, if you are a big screen HDTV gamer, the game will look like a big pixelated mess.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVED the game. I originally played it on a 20-something inch TV about 4 feet away. Then I got a 61-inch DLP and popped it in to replay it - and couldn't handle all of the big blocky pixels.

Now... a HD remake of ICO and SoTC would be awesome!

Crossing my fingers. I don't care how they do it or how difficult it is, I just hope it happens! And of course it would be remastered in HD. If it wasn't, that would defeat the purpose of releasing it on bluray for PS3. Just do what they did with GOW1/2 and everyone will be happy!

I still have my PS2 and one CRT TV in the house, so I can still play some PS2 games if I ever feel like it.

Agreed that SotC on a HDTV is a pixelated mess (via my BC PS3). I'm going to try my PS2 to see if it's any better, but I doubt it could improve.


I was just thinking about those Time Crisis Guncon3 games I have and will never be able to use again otherwise... :~)

Looks fine on my tv

This thread title is a tease :/. Should've put a question mark in or something.

I just stumbled over the Playstation.Blog Share today, I'd not seen this before. It is a place where people can submit ideas and have the community vote them up or down. Be sure to read about their idea submission policy first.

While we all should vote for Software PS2 Emulation, please show your support for the Team ICO Collection to have SotC and ICO remastered and released on blu-ray for the PS3 a la GoW Collection!

Wow, this thread is a tease and it's bringing my hopes high

Let's vote for the remake tho!

That's because it came out yesterday

yeah i really wanted to play ico but not about to pay 90 dollars for it..
http://www.amazon.com/Ico-Playstatio...8963454&sr=8-1

I own SotC for the PS2. Played it through twice, and would play it through a third time if it was rereleased for the PS3. I certainly hope that this rumor plays out. I'd love to try ICO since I missed it during it's initial release.

I realize that it's not for everyone, but I found SotC to be an amazing gaming experience; one of my favorite games of all time.