- Ueda joins Sony.

- Ueda sees a television commercial with a woman and a boy in a forest hands clasped walking hurriedly. The commercial sticks with him.

- He remembers about Galaxy Express 999, an old seventies manga that talks about a beautiful woman Maetel who travels with a boy named Tetsuro to the Andromeda galaxy.

- He decides to apply the television commercial and Galaxy Express 999's old-fashioned concept of 'boy meets girl' to a game.

- With the help of a programmer he makes a short pre-rendered video to show his idea and names the game ICO.

- Ueda wants ICO to become an icon of the growth games can pass through.

- The video is used to pitch ICO to the project approval board and impresses Shuhei Yoshida who green-lights the project for a PSone release.

- Kenji Kaido is appointed producer, Ueda the game's director and Yoshida project supervisor.