Ico’s cover was created by the games designer, Fumito Ueda. Ueda was inspired for his box art by the surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico. Ueda stated “the surrealistic world of de Chirico matched the allegoric world of Ico". This cover was only released in Europe and Japan due to not being finished in time for the North American release.

The game itself failed to sell well, and vice-president of Sony's Japan Studio blamed the much duller North American cover and indeed the games title for the poor sales. Hopes are up for another great design when the studios next game, The Last Guardian is released this year.

A lot of titles tend to stray away from Eastern styles when releasing in the west, however Okami certainly keeps its oriental style. The North American version of the cover explains very little about the game, but still screams out to the shopper to fin out more about it.

But the Wii release of Okami wasn’t without its troubles. Weeks after releasing the game players discovered that the cover included a very faint but visible IGN watermark, traced back to a screenshot hosted on the popular games site. To try and make up the error Capcom offered to replace the covers with one of three different styles – however this was delayed and Capcom ended up shipping all three covers to those who registered for the replacements.