Collection essentials #483 & #484: Katamari Damacy (PS2) and We Love Katamari (PS2)

Debuting in 2004, here’s the start of a very unique series from longtime developer Namco. The Kamatari series is the perfect example of that special flair for the bizarre that only seems to exist in Japan. You’ll know right off the bat when you turn on the game from the quirky music and strange imagery that you’re in for something extremely whimsical and wacky. 

The main character of the story is an odd-looking man called the “King of All Cosmos”. The story, told by him, is that he has destroyed the Moon and most of the stars in the sky. He tasks his son the Prince (who does not speak) to go to earth and roll up objects into large balls to send back into space and replace these objects. The King refers to himself as “we”, his speech is audibly represented by what seems to be a scratching record, and he just seems to have a very weird personality and way of talking, which sets the vibe that the game is going for. You play as the Prince and carry out this task bestowed upon you by your dad.

The concept of gameplay is that you roll around your ball (called a “Katamari”), which automatically sticks to any object that’s small enough, and you try to roll up as many things as you can within the time limit. As you keep accumulating things in your ball of objects, the Katamari will get bigger and bigger. The Prince himself is very small and you will start out by rolling up similarly-small objects, but by the end of the game there are stages where you can get a Katamari so big that you’ll be rolling up stuff like skyscrapers. The game is controlled with the two analog sticks, and controls can take a bit of getting used to as they’re a bit unusual. You can do stuff like dash by alternating them up and down rapidly, or change direction in a 180 by pressing them both down. At the start of a level you are usually given a target size for your Katamari, though there are some special objects like getting as many of certain animals as you possibly can. The sequel, We Love Katamari, came out a year later and leaves basic gameplay intact, but gets a little more creative with level design and objectives, plus it adds some new two-player modes. 

As you might expect, Katamari Damacy also has a rather unique soundtrack. The music is very memorable, and I think pretty much anyone who’s played this game can instantly recall and hum or sing the main theme at the drop of a hat. The songs do a great job setting an upbeat and fun tone. The tracks feature vocals, with the majority being in Japanese, but there’s some English in there as well.

When Katamari Damacy first came out, it had the looks of a very niche game for its time. Up until that point, you’d expect a game like this to only come out in Japan, or perhaps have a very quiet overseas release. However, it achieved more mainstream recognition than expected and very respectable sales. I’ve always seen its release as a marker of cultural change in America, when bizarre Japanese stuff was becoming more widely liked and respected, which I thought was great as people were becoming more open-minded to creative works markedly different from the norm.

As for my personal history, I first heard about Katamari Damacy from online friends who praised the game. I even remember the specific forum post I read when I first became aware of the game. It was at my 15th birthday party that a friend of mine (who I am no longer in contact with unfortunately) gave it to me as a gift, the very copy shown in the photo. I wound up getting stuck at a rather hard level in the game, which caused me to put it down, but I always came back to it every now and then until I eventually got through it and saw things to the end.

I didn’t pick up the sequel, We Love Katamari, until a few years later. And that game has a special place in my heart because of one particular day. It was New Year’s Day 2011, and I was going through something very strange. I was on winter break from college, but I was oddly finding myself without any appetite to play video games or anything else during the large amount of spare time I had, and it was starting to get me down quite a bit. That’s really unusual for me and I can’t remember too many other times where anything like that happened. On New Year’s Day I had nothing to do and I just laid in my bed for a long time feeling lousy and lacking motivation to do much of anything. Eventually I got sick of doing nothing, and I decided to just play We Love Katamari even though I didn’t really “feel like it.” Well, after some time, a miracle happened…I realized I was having a blast. And not only that, but all that discouragement and lack of video game appetite was purged on the spot and didn’t come back. I was totally charmed and delighted at playing such a fun game, and I remember being especially amused when I got to a level where the background music was a medley of songs from the first game with various animal noises as instrumentation. It was a day I’ll never forget!

If you’ve never played Katamari Damacy and seem intrigued by what I’ve said about it, then you really ought to try it out! The first game got an HD rerelease on modern platforms, so it’s nice and accessible in modern times. These games still stand out as unique and very fun even two decades later, and are easy choices for my list of collection essentials.