Okami Cover Art Marred by... IGN Watermark?

Apr. 22 10:54 PM by Alicia Ashby

NeoGAF is pretty hard for me to read, for the same reasons that make it kind of an essential read: it's the single largest forum in gaming, and when you get that many eyes together, interesting things are going to be revealed. For instance, hop to page four of the thread about Okami to see one of the most startling packaging gaffes I've ever seen exposed. Check out the image below; it seems Okami Wii shipped with a bizarre IGN watermark left present on the cover.

If you're having a hard time picking out the watermark at first (I know I did), here's an animated anigif that makes the watermark much easier to spot. Just be warned that once you've "seen" it, like those damn Magic Eye pictures, you'll never un-see it.

You may be wondering, "Why the hell was Capcom using IGN assets to make their box art??" And, well, it was probably a case of an artist downloading something in the name of convenience, and thinking they could either obliterate or cover up the watermark during photoshopping. (The less pleasant alternative is that they never noticed the watermarks, but I've never known a graphic designer who couldn't easily spot watermarks.)

Production artists downloading art from fansites simply because doing so is easier than getting into company databases happens all the time. Later on in the NeoGAF thread someone mentions a famous incident where the Metroid Fusion player's guide used images downloaded from (and watermarked to) fansite The Metroid Database. Still, this is a really unfortunate gaffe that certainly makes me feel a little less good about my copy of Okami. Rumors are swirling that Capcom may do a reprint of the game to remove the watermarks, but there's no official statement from Capcom yet about the issue.

Okami Gallery

Comments

I was really surprised by this at first too, but really I just consider it funny. My boyfriend and I had a good laugh over it when I showed it to him on my copy.

If they do reprint it, I wonder if it'll make the first pressing more valuable? (Especially with the similarly-afflicted French cover.)

 

Yeah, on IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat, Boz and Matt Cass, talked about that and said basically the same thing. Somebody F'd up.

 

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