The rumor that an HD remastered edition for the artistic hit Okami is coming soon has been confirmed. The news broke late yesterday that the game will be ready for purchase in Japan this fall. This lead to speculation that a U.S. version was coming in the near future. This was confirmed by Capcom last night, in the form of a press release. Okami will be lauching in the U.S. as well on Nevember 1.

The Japanese version will be titled Okami Zekke-ban, which roughly translates to “Okami Magnificent Version” according to andriasang. The U.S. verion is simply Okami HD. It is scheduled to be released on November 1, with a price of 3,990 Yen in Japan, $19.99 in the U.S.

Right now they have a trailer for the game, and it looks great. The style of Okami lends itself perfectly to vector graphics, and would have made a HD remaster of this game a relative snap. Which makes one wonder, what took them so long to make it?

Okami was one of the last games released for the Playstation 2 before the PS3 was released. So many people, like me, who just purchased a PS3 and got caught up in the new console, let this game pass them by. As a result, Okami received really poor sales despite receiving high scores from critics and those that played the game. Capcom would have done well to start on an HD remaster at that point and had it ready for release a year or two later.

But they didn’t, and perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, because, I for one am still dying to play it and see what the hype was about.

[via: joystiq]