They never share a language. He gets her out of the castle by holding her hand and not letting go.
ICO reached North America on September 25th, 2001, Japan on December 6th, and Europe the following March. A boy is born with horns, is sealed inside a castle for it, and finds a girl already imprisoned there. She speaks a language the game never translates on a first playthrough. The team built the game by taking things out. No score. No item menu. No cast of characters to meet. What survived was the hand: you hold it, you feel her weight when she is slow, and shadows come to pull her under the floor the moment you are apart. She cannot fight. Some of the doors open only for her. The early North American disc went out without the second-player mode, without the subtitles that finally translate her language on a second run, without Ueda's own box art, and without an extended ending in which the two of them eat a watermelon together. Ten years later a remaster put them back. At the end there is a beach, and a long walk down it, and he is the one walking toward her.
About this game
ICO is an action-adventure game directed by Fumito Ueda and developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan Studio for the PlayStation 2. A boy born with horns is sealed inside a castle and finds a girl, Yorda, imprisoned there. The two cannot speak the same language, and the boy leads her out by taking her hand. Released in North America on September 25, 2001, in Japan on December 6, 2001, and in Europe on March 22, 2002, the game was built by removing rather than adding — an approach now widely described as design by subtraction. Music was composed by Michiru Oshima with the sound unit Pentagon.
Collector's Guide
Region & Compatibility
The PS2 is region-locked. A machine and a disc must belong to the same region to work together: NTSC-J (Japan and parts of Asia), NTSC-U/C (North America), or PAL (Europe, Australia). A Japanese console plays Japanese games. It is also Japanese 100-volt hardware — a fat model used in North America's 120 volts or Europe's 220–240 needs a step-down transformer; the slim models use an external adapter that can be swapped for the right one. DVD films carry their own separate region code, fixed to the console as well.
Maintenance Tips
The PS2's most vulnerable part is its optical drive. The laser pickup weakens with age, producing the famous Disc Read Error — discs that load slowly, read intermittently, or read games but not DVDs (or the reverse). Keeping the vents and internal fan free of dust matters, especially on the larger 'fat' models, which run warmer. Replacement laser units are still made, but match the part number to your exact model before buying, as several incompatible types exist. DualShock 2 controllers commonly develop sticky or drifting analog sticks with age; the rubber and contacts wear, and both are repairable.
What to Watch Out For
Before buying, these are the points worth knowing — from someone who handles original Japanese ICO copies regularly.
Is the North American disc the same game as the Japanese and European ones?
No. The early North American release, dated September 25, 2001, went out without several things the Japanese and European versions carry: the second-playthrough two-player mode in which a second person controls Yorda, the subtitles that translate Yorda's language on a second playthrough, the box art designed by Fumito Ueda, and the extended watermelon ending. If those matter to you, look for the Japanese or European disc — or the 2011 HD version, which restored them.
What is the watermelon ending, and how do I see it?
Finish the game once and start again from your cleared save. On the beach at the end of the second playthrough, a watermelon sits behind a large rock on the long walk toward Yorda. Carry it to her and an extended scene plays in which the two of them eat it together. This was in the Japanese and European versions, not in the early North American release.
The disc looks like a CD, not a DVD. Is it the wrong disc?
It depends on the region. The US and Japanese releases shipped on CD-ROM — around 700MB, with the blue underside used by early PlayStation 2 CD titles — so on those two discs a blue underside is normal and is not a sign of a counterfeit. The European/PAL release is different: it shipped on a standard DVD-ROM, so a normal silver disc is what you should expect there. A European copy on a blue CD-ROM would be the one worth questioning.
Do I need to understand Japanese to play the Japanese disc?
The boy's dialogue is subtitled in the language of the release, but Yorda speaks a constructed language that is left untranslated on a first playthrough in every version. Puzzles are physical rather than text-driven. The Japanese disc is playable without Japanese, though menus and the boy's lines will be in Japanese.
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