Clover removed from Okami Wii credits

Capcom has confirmed Clover has been removed from the Okami Wii credits, blaming legal constraints for the deletion.

The Wii conversion was handled by Ready At Dawn, and according to Capcom this left its hands tied.

"The credits were removed because they were a pre-rendered movie that contained the Clover logo," said Seth Killian, community manager at Capcom.

"We have no legal right to use the Clover logo in a game they were not involved with directly. We also didn't have the source to the credit movie itself, so we couldn't just use it and remove the Clover logo."

Clover created Okami for PS2 and former game director Hideki Kamiya is upset at the decision; not simply because his name is absent from the credits, but because the ending movie closes the game and conveys all of the emotion the team poured into the project over many years.

"I'm not disappointed because my name was removed from the game. Of course, we all have pride in our work; we all want to stand up and say 'I made this,'" said Hideki Kamiya in a translated statement. "Yet more importantly, I find it extremely regrettable that the [thoughts, emotions and messages] that went into the staff roll are gone from the game as well.

"I wonder who could have possibly been pleased with Okami's staff roll being cut?" he added.

However, even with legal permission, Ready At Dawn claimed it may not have been that easy to include the ending roll due to Wii data sizes - although it was quick to point out it would never "willingly" not give credit where it was due.

"As was noted in many articles about this, here at Ready At Dawn we're huge fans of Clover's work and Okami in particular. We would never willingly tried to not give credit where credit was due and made a point, everywhere we could, in making the Wii version identical to the PS2 version (we even got sh*t for that with people asking for new content)," said Didier Malenfant, co-founder of RAD, in response to the statement by Hideki Kamiya.

"To be completely fair, while part of the issue seems to have been a legal one with Capcom Japan (I don't know the details of that), we did also have a problem with the Wii data being much larger than the original PS2 version. We ended up running out of room on the disc which would have made adding the staff roll back in the game a tough thing anyway," he added.

"On the plus side, the European Wii version contains the Secret Theater that was edited out in the European PS2 version."

Clover Studios was closed down in March 2007 in "an effort to increase efficiency". The team was responsible for games such as Viewtiful Joe, God Hand and Okami. Hideki Koyami is now in charge of Platinum Games.

Okami was released on PS2 in February 2007 and achieved top marks on Eurogamer. The Wii version has motion-sensing controls, widescreen and 480p support.

Okami Wii is due out in Europe on 13th June.