PlayStation cover & PS2 case designs

[Gemini-Phoenix]

I have noticed that early PAL PlayStation games tend to have a full picture on the front, but then later ones have a black strip with "PlayStation" written along the bottom ~ Anyone know at what point Sony chose to start this, and what was the last game to feature a full cover picture, and what part number is it? As far as I have been able to tell, it seems to be a good portion of games with a part number lower than 01000, with some of the ones closer to that number being the new style design...

I have also noticed that some of the very early PAL PS2 games came in black / Navy coloured cases, whereas newer ones come in Royal Blue cases... Anyone know why this is? And at what point they chose to change? Was it to do with poor quality of the earlier cased esigns (As was the case with the earlier Mega Drive cases, before they got replaced by better quality cases) - Or is it simply to create a more uniform look that makes them stand out a bit more next to Xbox and GameCube games?

[PapaStu]

The US PS2 games all come in that Midnight/Dark Navy color. I think that SCEA/SCEE/SCEJ were just staying uniform across the launches. It seems as if each region controls their own case designs (ie the general CD case for PS games here in america vs. the bigger style cases in Europe and even the dropping of the 'LongBox' here in America a year or so after the PS launch) and SCEE chose to make their games stand out, much like the Green cases do for the Xbox games.