Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

New site: designroom.site
Personal: rooftopshouting.com
Shadow of the Colossus story: bit.ly/sotcoralhistory
Niantic/Punchdrunk story: bit.ly/nianticpunchdrunk
Street Fighter 2 book: bit.ly/likeahurricane
Final Fantasy 7 book: bit.ly/500yearslater
PlayStation 25th video: bit.ly/playstation25th

An illustration shows two characters fighting in a futuristic tournament.

An illustration shows all 16 colossi from Shadow of the Colossus in a single image.

A photograph shows the front cover of the Street Fighter 2 history book Like a Hurricane. It features various directional arrows and circles.

A photograph shows the front cover of the Final Fantasy 7 history book 500 Years Later. The artwork shows people working late in a tall office building.

October 15, 2025 at 10:55 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

11. Back to the Design Room story, one photo we didn't end up including was this shot of Ueda and producer Kenji Kaido showing Ico to European media outlets, provided by Imogen Baker Othman who helped organize that trip.

Fumito Ueda and Kenji Kaido stand near a blue screen to show their game Ico to European media outlets.

October 15, 2025 at 6:24 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

10. We also asked people around the games industry to sketch Team Ico characters for that issue, like this one from former Ready at Dawn concept artist Steven Wen.

A sketch shows Ico and Yorda holding hands while looking out at the sea in front of them.

October 15, 2025 at 6:18 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

8. As a nod to that 1UP Presents story, I used one of the same screenshots in the Design Room Shadow of the Colossus oral history.

A screen capture from Design Room's Shadow of the Colossus oral history, showing various screenshots from the game.

A screen capture from 1UP Presents issue number 3, showing a screenshot from Shadow of the Colossus.

October 15, 2025 at 6:08 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Back in 2011, I profiled Ueda for 1UP's short-lived print-on-demand magazine, 1UP Presents, where he compared game development to hip hop and talked about listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack when making Shadow of the Colossus.

The cover for 1UP Presents issue number three, with a Fumito Ueda sketch of Trico from The Last Guardian on the front.

October 15, 2025 at 6:04 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

5. I previously worked with Takeshi Oga, the illustrator who did our Shadow cover art, on an illustration for the "Life in Japan" package we did at Polygon in 2015.

An illustration shows two girls playing games in the foreground while orange and brown smoke fills the background.

October 15, 2025 at 5:48 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

4. If you're wondering whether Design Room's background color was chosen to match Shadow of the Colossus' color palette... well, it's not not the reason.

A screen capture shows the Design Room homepage, with three Shadow of the Colossus stories featured prominently.

October 15, 2025 at 5:43 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

3. Early on for the oral history, I was planning a section on the game’s ending. I didn’t end up getting enough people to speak to it to make it work, but here’s a nice quote from Ueda on endings.

A screen capture shows a quote from Fumito Ueda talking about the endings of his games, with Ueda wondering what it says about a game designer if players focus on an ending rather than a game's core gameplay.

October 15, 2025 at 5:40 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

1. I’ve now been doing this long enough that I’m doing retrospectives on games I covered the first time around. So in this photo from the story, you can spot preview code Sony sent us when I worked at 1UP, which is conveniently dated 7/25/05 — a few months before the game shipped.

A photograph shows old preview code of Shadow of the Colossus, a copy of Edge magazine with the game on its cover, and two old promotional DVDs for the game.

October 15, 2025 at 5:36 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

And somehow the X-Men: Children of the Atom story got a new header graphic taken from this YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXfU... This one I have more trouble explaining.

A screen capture shows Polygon's X-Men: Children of the Atom story with a replaced header image.

August 7, 2025 at 7:46 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Looks like my Street Fighter 2 and Final Fantasy 7 oral histories on Polygon now give 404 errors. Which, to be fair, was probably inevitable since those stories were on custom pages that existed separately from the rest of the site. But if only there were a better way... @designroom.bsky.social

A screen capture shows a 404 error where Polygon's Final Fantasy 7 oral history used to be.

August 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

The architect behind the Nintendo hotel signed some of the rooms, as you do.

July 5, 2025 at 2:43 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Alongside the first issue of Famitsu, before the name change.

July 5, 2025 at 7:57 AM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Like a Hurricane and 500 Years Later on sale at Suzume in Saitama.

July 5, 2025 at 7:51 AM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Can vouch

June 23, 2025 at 7:51 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Website: RooftopShouting.com
Culture Shock: bit.ly/cultureshockpackage
Kakuto Chojin story: bit.ly/kakutochojin
Niantic/Punchdrunk story: bit.ly/nianticpunchdrunk
Street Fighter 2 book: bit.ly/likeahurricane
Final Fantasy 7 book: bit.ly/500yearslater
PlayStation 25th video: bit.ly/playstation25th

May 9, 2025 at 6:01 PM

Matt Leone

@mattleone.bsky.social

Since I'm still employed for the rest of the day, here are a couple photos of Eugene Jarvis with a rare Cruis'n USA cabinet that I took in the early days of Polygon that I never had a chance to do anything with.