ICO is a video game that delivers an experience unmatched by any other game that I’ve come across before or since. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, whose team went on to also create Shadow of the Colossus.

Ueda’s design philosophy is evident in his work:

I was attracted, not by the idea of playing within a well-constructed set of rules, but by the idea of playing, experiencing, and adventuring within a real world. As a child, what appealed to me more than “the fun of playing games” was the emotion conveyed by the works I experienced, and the way these works brought their worlds to life.¹

In creating ICO, Ueda was inspired by Eric Chahi’s Another World (also known as Out of This World and Outer World), as well as by the work of Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico.

Ueda himself painted the cover art for ICO:

As is often the case with Japanese video games, the North American release had different cover art that was egregiously inferior. I won’t bother including a picture. What I’ll instead include for comparison is “Mystery and Melancholy of a Street” by Giorgio de Chirico:

ICO and Shadow of the Colossus were originally released for Playstation 2, but they have also been graphically enhanced and released together for PS3 as The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection. It’s a high-quality re-release.

Others at Sony in Japan expanded on Ueda’s original cover art for ICO to create this image, which is used in the title screen for The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection (click to enlarge):

I bought a PS3 myself in late 2011 in anticipation of the impending release of Team ICO’s third game, The Last Guardian. There seem to have been a lot of problems with the development of that game, but I still hope to see it eventually. Fortunately, other games (such as Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls) make the PS3 worth owning in the meantime.

In an interview for Eurogamer.net, Peter Molyneux (creator of Populous and other games) described ICO as follows:

Mystery was part of its mechanic, it didn’t have real power-ups or anything. It was genius and it still remains a work of genius.

If I made something like ICO, I’d be very happy to die.

¹ I don’t know the source of this quote. if you do, please let me know.

If I had to choose a single favorite painter, it would probably be Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. He once said, “I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams.”

You can see more of his work at these sites:

• Dark Art
• Iluminatornia Gnosis

There’s also a book of his art available. The book includes a decent selection at a good price, and I like its quotations from Beksinski, but I’d like a more comprehensive book of his work.

Some time ago, I discovered that there are “netlabels” out there that offer lots of free, high-quality music. (Examples include Kahvi Collective, Ubiktune, and Soft Phase.)

Kyoto Republic was one of the smaller netlabels I came across, but it ended up having a high concentration of releases that would end up becoming lasting favorites of mine. And most of these releases turned out to be by just one person, Finnish musician Ilkka Hänninen.

Hänninen has released music under several names over the years, including Jean Nine, Trailing Space, and Finnish Pop Sensation, with my favorites being the Trailing Space albums. Aside from the Kyoto Republic page, you can find more of his work on the Jean Nine Bandcamp page. Until recently, you could also find some at trailingspace.net.

If I were to recommend a couple of albums to sample, I’d probably go with these two:

• Trailing Space – Bring the Darkness Over This Place
• Jean Nine – All of a Sudden I Am Full of Scars

I’d like to be helpful and describe the type of music that I’m referring to here, but I can never keep my genre names straight. Appropriate terms might include post-rock, space rock, down-tempo, and IDM.

A compilation album on the Kyoto Republic site, These Days Are Not for Us, introduced me to the work of Jori Kemppi (who has also released music under the name Jori TJ Kemppi). I found Kemppi’s music somewhat challenging to track down. Fortunately, he released a 2012 album, Genmaicha Sessions, that includes some of his best tracks:

• Jori Kemppi – Genmaicha Sessions

As of this writing, some songs by both of these musicians seem to be available nowhere but on their Last.fm pages:

• Trailing Space at Last.fm
• Jean Nine at Last.fm
• Jori TJ Kemppi at Last.fm
• Ilkka Hänninen at Last.fm