The game remains unchanged for its Western review, but the game’s promotional art hasn’t been so lucky.
Jeremy Cail, a creative designer for Atlus’ US branch, has revealed some of the problems that the publisher had with Catherine’s rather raunchy artwork in the American market. Back in April, it was revealed that the game’s box art had been tweaked for certain US retailers.
“We’ve had ups and down from retailers about the provocative nature of the artwork,” he said. “Things you’d think you were OK actually caused comment.” Cail explained that while the content on the game disc is the same, Atlus had to create two different versions of the cover artwork for Catherine, as certain retailers were concerned with what their customers might think. “They wanted the change in case people got the wrong idea about the game,” he said. “Or, as I see it, the right idea about Catherine!”
It wasn’t just retailers that had problems with some of Catherine’s artwork either; Atlus put together a promotional badge stuffer for E3 that showed off the game’s two leading ladies, Catherine and Katherine, and Cail said that it took three or four attempts to get it right. What made things more difficult, he said, was that the Atlus US had to balance concerns for the US market with what the Japanese branch – which developed the game – intended for the art. He added that Atlus is well aware that its games have a niche audience, so it wanted to preserve as much of the original art as it could for those fans.
The fact that Catherine actually got a Western release in the first place is impressive, and to make it without cuts is wonderful. In an ideal world, the changes that Atlus made to the artwork wouldn’t have been necessary at all, but if the game itself is unchanged then it doesn’t seem that bad of a compromise.
Catherine comes out for PS3 and Xbox 360 this July.
Source: The A List Daily via Industry Gamers
