Katamari Damacy

1
Katamari Damacy

• By Kenneth Chung

2
Katamari Damacy?

• A third-person puzzle-action game for the PS2

3
Where did this thing come from?

• Katamari Damacy was published and developed by
  Namco
• It was released March 18, 2004 in Japan and
  September 22, 2004 in North America
• The lead designer is Keita Takahashi and the
  composer is Yu Miyake

4
How do I run this thing?

• Pay 50 for the Katamari Damacy box in 2004
• Open the Katamari Damacy box
• Check if there is a disk labeled Katamari Damacy
  in the box
• Turn on PS2
• Insert disk into PS2
• Other excessive actions

5
Story Overview

• The King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys the
  stars and other space junk after a drunken night
  and tasks his tiny 5cm son, the Prince, to
  rebuild the obliterated celestial bodies
• In order to create the celestial bodies, the
  Prince must roll a ball (the Katamari) around the
  Earth accumulating matter to be converted into
  stars

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What do I do here?

• The player controls the 5cm Prince who rolls the
  spherical Katamari using the two analog sticks on
  the PS2 controller, similar to RC controls
• Begin picking up tiny objects like mahjong pieces
  and erasers then gradually move on to rolling up
  entire continents as the Katamari size increases
• The game is split into several levels of
  differing environments and objectives. The most
  common objective is to increase the Katamari to a
  certain size before the time limit is up. There
  are also levels with unique objectives such as
  rolling up the largest cow possible or trying to
  accumulate as many twins as possible

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Everything Looks Beautiful

• The game starts out in a household environment
  with seemingly random object spread out across
  the room. Being 5cms, tables are towering
  building and mice are mean jerks. Gradually the
  Katamari grows in size until finally, sweet mice
  e-raticating vengeance is yours. Then you get
  too big to fit in the house and move onto the
  backyard.
• Once out of the home environment, the Prince
  moves onto the suburban neighborhood environment
  eventually being big enough to pick up screaming,
  rapidly flagellating human beings
• After consuming all he can in the neighborhood,
  the Prince moves onto the open world and can
  travel to neighboring urban cities or the rural
  countryside
• Eventually when the Prince reaches Godzilla size,
  he can travel across the oceans, obliterating
  entire cities, Godzilla himself, clouds, and a
  few Shinto gods. At the end, he is able to pick
  up the countries of the world while the credits
  roll lt-pun.

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Everything Sounds Beautiful

• One of the most memorable attributes of the game
  is the amazing soundtrack. The main theme of Na
  naaaa nanana nana na na na na na nana na dun duga
  dun dun dugaduga dun dun is something that will
  be haunting the player for weeks.
• From jazz to scat (the music) to nonsense, it
  really makes no difference if you cannot
  understand the English, the Japanese, or the
  undecipherable Japanese-accented English. The
  tracks meld perfectly with the psychotic
  environment and the screams of the objects you
  pick up.

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Everything Sounds Beautiful (Cont.)

• When the Prince picks up an object, it makes its
  own unique noise. For instance picking up a
  Calico Cat would make a meow sound while
  picking up Busy Momma would produce the sound
  of a woman screaming.
• The individual sounds each object makes when the
  Prince picks them up is intensely gratifying. It
  feels so good.

10
Review The Good

• The gameplay is absolutely brilliant. Commonly
  referred to as crack, Katamari Damacy
  completely consumes the players. Similar to
  RPGs which use a progressively more enticing
  dangling carrot of character enhancement to
  death grip the players attention, Katamari
  Damacy also uses the allure of the dangling
  carrot. Except they juiced the carrot and are
  feeding the sweet nectar intravenously into the
  players veins. Because every object of the
  thousands of objects the Prince picks up
  increases the size and shape of the Katamari,
  power is gained in an extremely constant and
  fluid manner.
• As previously detailed, the music and sound is
  masterfully done and melds perfectly with the
  peculiar gameplay.
• While the graphics are outdated in this era of
  gaming, the designers really took advantage of
  the blockiness of the PS2 and made it incredibly
  charming. Life gave the designers lemons so they
  made them into cubes. Not even bothering with
  any kind of realistic interpretation of animals
  and objects, the artists achieved whimsy through
  simplicity.
• With hundreds of objects to collect in the game,
  the replayability of Katamari Damacy is decent.
  A list of every object collected along with its
  description, its rotatable graphic, and the sound
  it makes when it is picked up is unlocked in the
  Collections menu. Achieving certain unwritten
  objectives also unlocks comets that can be shot
  off when looking at the night sky. Rolling up
  presents unlock different items the Prince can
  carry or wear like a guitar or a duck dress (a la
  Bjork). Rolling up the Princes cousins unlocks
  them for usage in the two player head-to-head
  game.

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Review The Bad

• The two player head-to-head game is more of a
  mediocre afterthought rather than a major
  component of the game. The players are locked
  into a small room with an assortment of objects
  and the player that ends up the largest wins.
  The bigger player can knock the smaller player
  around more easily. If the size discrepancy is
  large enough, the bigger player can roll the
  smaller one into his Katamari for a duration.
• There are many design problem with the two player
  game. Unlike the one player game, the setting is
  just a small undetailed circular room.
  Environment plays such a major role in the one
  player game that without the feel of
  explorational discovery, the game lacks the
  grounding connection to real life.
• Similarly, when the Katamari gets to country
  collecting size, the game quickly loses the
  submersive quality of being in a familiar
  environment which is present in the previous
  environments like the house or the neighborhood.
  Rolling up a house is imaginable, but rolling up
  an entire country just becomes too intangible.
• The story is barely existent. Its not a game
  that will make the player feel much if anything
  for anyone involved in the plotline. While the
  music can generate an emotional response, little
  else in the game has as much emotional depth.
  Katamari Damacy is a light whimsical game so if
  the player is looking for a heavy, emotional,
  plot-driven game, they need to lighten up and
  find another game.

12
Copycats

• The very core of Katamari Damacys gameplay is
  similar to traditional RPGs. In a traditional
  RPG, characters grow in power as they accomplish
  certain tasks which in turn allows them to
  accomplish progressively more difficult tasks.
  Katamari Damacy compresses this system by making
  the tasks quick, simple, and plentiful with
  instant rewards.
• Katamari Damacy was the first in a long line of
  copycats
• The microscopic stage in the PC game Spore by
  Maxis, similar to the Flash game flOw, used the
  same formula of
• Consume stuff -gt Grow -gt Consume bigger stuff
• This spawned all kinds copycat online Flash games
  usually involving cannibalistic fish.
• The closest clone of Katamari Damacy is a Steam
  game called The Wonderful End of the World, which
  was decent but was not nearly as charming,
  expansive, or complex as Katamari Damacy.
• The quality of these games compared to Katamari
  Damacy is of course much worse.

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Demographics

• The target demographics for Katamari Damacy is
  the practically the entire spectrum of gamers.
• The gameplay and controls are extremely
  simplistic. The only controls used in the course
  of the game are the two analog control sticks.
  All the player needs is two limbs or stubs or
  flaps of skin to maneuver the Katamari. All you
  need to know about the gameplay is to roll over
  stuff. This makes the game accessible to
  hardcore, casual, and even non-gamers of all
  ages. Infants could be placed on the analog
  sticks and their erratic movements would progress
  the game.
• The difficulty is almost entirely dependent on
  the players knowledge of the object placement in
  each level. No matter how apt at RC controls a
  player is, without knowledge of an efficient
  growth/time path, the game becomes more
  luck-based than skill-based. But through trial
  and error, discovery of an efficient path lessens
  the difficulty of the game significantly. Still,
  there are many more objects than the player can
  possibly collect in each level within the time
  constraint so extremely hardcore players can
  appreciate the futility of trying to collect
  everything in each level.
• There are very few elements in the game that
  parents could find objectionable for their
  children. A hardcore teetotaling family may find
  the short statement about the drunken King of all
  Cosmos in the beginning offensive. There are
  also topless block men in the game. If a parent
  is concerned about their childrens world
  obliterating tendencies, they may also want to
  avoid this game.

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Conclusion

• The strengths of Katamari Damacy are its
  accessibility, the constant power increase,
  immersion into a familiar environment, ageless,
  whimsical graphics, catchy music, gratifying
  sound effects, and a large capacity for
  exploration.
• The weaknesses are the two player game, weak
  plotline, and may be too ridiculous for
  hard-nosed businessmen.
• Katamari Damacy is definitely worth the purchase
  and is a must for everyone.