It seems to me that a lot of gamers, not to mention game journalists, have gotten it into their heads that our chosen form of recreation won’t be taken seriously unless we recognise a landmark achievement within the history of gaming; the video game equivalent to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

Being both a film student and a gamer this is a concept that really speaks to me, but before I go into the basic gist of things I’d like to take a moment to explain what I mean by the Citizen Kane of video games.

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I love Shadow of the Colossus. There it is. And I know a lot of you reading this agree with me. From the obsessed main character, the vast empty landscapes to the titular colossi themselves, it’s (in my opinion at least) one of the most awe inspiring experiences on a console to date. And we all know how awesome it would to have a next-gen upgrade of the game made available.

Well, so does Fumito Ueda, the game’s creator. For the release of God of War 3, the GoWar series are being ported to the PS3, completely remastered in 720p at 60 frames a second. Fumito Ueda wouldn’t mind seeing a similar combo pack for his last two games, Ico and SotC:

“I always thought they were designed for PS2 and should stay there. But lately, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to provide the games to other platforms to reach more users.”

Wouldn’t this be awesome? Having Colossus and Ico on the PS3, anti-aliased, upgraded textures, rendered in 720p? It would, wouldn’t it?

Team Ico fans rejoice! This Thursday, LittleBigPlanet will be receiving a new costume patch which will add not only characters from Team Ico self-named PS2 classic, Ico, but it’s spiritual sequel Shadow of the Colossus as well.

From Ico, Media Molecule will be adding sackboy costumes for Ico and Yorda from the first game.

Media Molecule has just updated their website with images of the costumes based on Shadow of the Colossus that will appear in their Team Ico costume pack, which includes sackboy variants of Wander and two different colossus seen in the game.

The pack won’t just include costumes though; Media Molecule has just confirmed that it will also come with stickers and sound effects as well.

Below are the wonderfully charming new Sackboy costumes in all their glory.

As most of you should know, Sony gave the go ahead to adapt Shadow of the Colossus into a feature film. The fact that most film adaptations of video games suck doesn’t seem to scare the writer for the SotC film; Justin Marks:

“I think many of the games haven’t worked as movies because it’s hard to find the right game. There are very few that lend themselves to movies,” said Marks.

“If we started thinking that anything that worked in one medium shouldn’t be adapted for another we wouldn’t have a lot of the great movies we’ve had, because so many of them came from novels.”

Marks also ads that because Shadow of the Colossus is such a sparse and minimalistic game (as far as content goes), there’s no need to tear down extra plotlines and characters.

“This is a game that catches you unaware — it catches you on an emotional and experiential level, not just for the puzzles you solve,” he added.

“With a lot of games you’re caught trying to please the fans and the mainstream audience. What’s so nice about this game is that it’s all seen through such an adult lens, so that what pleases the fans also pleases a wider audience.”

This will be the best news you’ve ever heard, or the worst, but First Showing has just confirmed that one of gaming’s most praised intellectual properties, Shadow of the Colossus, is heading to the big screen.

The movie is currently being developed by producer Kevin Misher (Public Enemies, Scorpion King, the Interpreter) at Columbia Pictures. This isn’t so bad.

Unfortunately, it appears that Hollywood’s favourite fanboy, Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and the upcoming Voltron and Masters of the Universe movies) will be penning the script. This isn’t so good.

Can they do faithfulness to one of gaming’s most loved intellectual properties? Our will it be completely destroyed in the transition to the big screen? It’s going to be quite a while before we find out, unfortunately.

It’s a sad moment to have to bear this news, but we have it on word from reliable sources which have admitted that Sony will not reveal Team Ico’s new game at this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

It’s no secret that the famous developers, previously responsible for the artistic tour-de-force of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, are hard at work on a title for the PS3 console, and many gamers have been eagerly holding out for TGS 2008 for a reveal; we now know that this will not be the case.

Maybe next year, eh?

It’s Shadow of Colossus like you’ve never seen it before. It’s epic… it’s profound… it has about 8 colours and your character is nothing is nothing more than a dot!

What more do you want?!

You can download the fulll game here, or you can just watch the trailer below if you can’t be arsed to do so.