Video Game / Katamari Damacy

18 Following

Katamari Damacy is the first game of the Katamari series, released for the PlayStation 2 on March 18, 2004 in Japan, and September 22 in North America.

The King of All Cosmos gets drunk one night and accidentally destroys all the stars in the Great Cosmos. The following morning, he assigns his son, the Prince, to make new stars by collecting random objects from the Earth to be turned into stars. The Prince, who had been treated rather badly by his father up to now, does this by running the objects over with a big sticky ball that makes bigger and bigger clumps of objects as it collects them. The Prince starts by collecting ants and thumbtacks, and eventually moves on to whales, jumbo jets, office towers, and sports stadiums... and so begins Katamari Damacy.

Cutscenes between levels follow the Hoshino family, some of the few people to take notice of the mess caused by the King. Levels follow one of two styles: "Make a Star", where the Prince makes progressively larger stars by rolling Katamaris to a specific diameter within the King's designated time, and constellation levels, which revolve around collecting specific objects (either collecting a lot of said object or collecting a single object with the goal of getting a large-sized one).

In 2018, a remaster titled Katamari Damacy Reroll, was released on Nintendo Switch and Steam, with a 2020 release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The Switch version allows you to use two separated Joy-Cons to roll the Katamari with motion controls, and features HD Rumble support and multiplayer with single Joy-Cons.

Katamari Damacy contains examples of:

• 6 Is 9: The description of the 9 from the flower clock states that it can be turned upside-down to be a 6, "but nobody really does that". In the Gemini stage, there is instead an upside-down 6 in place of the 9.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Both kanji in 塊魂 (Katamari Damacy) have near-identical right-hand radicals; to a casual observer, the entire kanji appear almost identical.
• Artificial Sun: The premise of the game is that the player character needs to replace the stars his father, the King of All Cosmos, destroyed in a drunken bender. He somehow accomplishes this by gathering up a bunch of junk from Earth and the Solar System and igniting it when it gets big enough.
• Artistic License – Space: The final challenge, and the Katamari with the biggest size requirement, is the Moon. That said, not only is it not a star, it is, realistically, magnitudes smaller than the sun (an actual star). This is because it’s based on the apparent size of the Moon in the sky, and not its actual size.
• Bananas Are Funny: The level Make a Star 7 starts the player right in front of a long row of bananas. Gradually rolling them up will have the King slowly say "BA", "NA" and "NA" in response.
• Bowdlerization:
  • The English version omits the detail that the King was drunk when he broke the stars.
  • An aversion in the case of the boxes labeled "chocolate" that look like packs of cigarettes; they were also referred to as chocolate in the Japanese release. Complete with some tongue-in-cheek item descriptions.
    It says "Light". But since it's actually chocolate, it doesn't matter.
• Brick Joke:
  • The King of All Cosmos spends the game repeatedly saying it would be nice if you could visit certain countries on Earth if you weren't busy with work. The Creative Closing Credits minigame is you rolling up countries on Earth by using the Moon as a Katamari.
  • The game's B-plot involves the Hoshino family travelling to meet Tomino on the space station he works on, only for him to come out saying the mission has been postponed bacause the moon went missing. On the final stage, you then casually roll his space shuttle onto the Katamari. Way later, after the ending cutscene and credits, The Stinger reveals the family is safe and sound atop the new Moon you created, enjoying their "lunar vacation".
• Constellations as Locations: Constellations are physical groupings of stars, until they were all destroyed by the King of All Cosmos on a drunken bender, and your job is to build new ones to place back in the sky.
• Department of Redundancy Department: One of the songs on the soundtrack is entitled "The Wonderful Star's Walk is Wonderful".
• Developer's Foresight: If you manage to clip out of bounds, the King will have special Easter Egg dialogue describing the glitch as "the Royal Warp", saying that it's kind of embarrassing that it happened, but wasn't it fun?
• Early-Installment Weirdness: There are several notable differences from its sequels.
  • The tutorial level is a completely flat stage that cannot be replayed or revisited after finishing it on a save file. The existence of wall-climbing as a technique is also not covered in said level, instead being shown off in a video played after the tutorial.
  • Stages tend to have more lax time limits than in the sequels, making them easier to complete. Notably, stages from this game that are revisited in later titles often have their time limits shortened to fit better with the difficulty of the other stages.
  • The game has two "collect just one themed object" stages, Make Taurus and Make Ursa Major, which task the player with collecting the biggest cow or bear possible, respectively. Starting with We ♥ Katamari, these concepts would be combined into the Cowbear stage, with the original two levels never being revisited.
  • Only one royal present accessory can be worn at a time. Later games would let accessories that are worn on different parts of the body be worn together to some extent.
  • The Prince's cousins are only playable in versus mode, with them being unlocked as the player completes levels rather than being found within stages. Following the completion of the game, every stage (including eternal stages) will contain one cousin to roll up.
  • Most cousin's designs are slightly different. Notably, Lalala lacks a tan, Jungle's body is camo patterned rather than reflecting the environment, and Shikao's face is positioned properly in the center of his head. Some of these original designs would be reused in the Reroll versions, in addition to some of their later designs being retrofitted into their first appearance, such as Marcy’s smorgasbord of colors replacing her varying shades of purple.
  • There's a lower variety of sounds for objects that are rolled up, leading to some objects having different sounds or no sound at all in the first game than the rest of the series. The cousins also all have the same wobbly digital-ish speech clip, rather than each having a unique voice. Said wobbly sound was given to the Prince as the noise he makes upon being rolled up starting with We ♥ Katamari.
  • This game is the only one in the series where the King's berating of his son upon failing a level does not include invoking physical harm, and as such the player does not get to move the Prince around during the scene.
  • The Queen's presence is extremely minimal, with her only appearing briefly during the opening and ending cutscenes without any dialogue as well as being mentioned a few times offhandedly by the King, who refers to her only as "mother". She also has a slightly different design, sporting blue eyes and a simpler head pattern with red dots.
  • The final stage does not have the King and Queen present as special objects to roll up. Since the cousins are not playable in the main game, the Prince is not present as an object to be rolled up either, and thus the collection lacks the "Royal" category.
  • The King's dialogue is a lot more repetitive, and there's a few moments where he refers to himself as "I" rather than using his Royal "We" tic. He also points out if a level's Present hasn't been rolled up yet in his pre-level dialogue, whereas later games use UI icons for that instead.
• Exact Words: In the Gemini stage, you are required to catch pairs of items and people. The King of All Cosmos clarifies that the quintuplets hanging out in the area don't count. On the other hand, when he asks for a cow in the Taurus stage, this can include a picture of the animal on a row of milk cartons just ahead of the starting point.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the game over screen, the King of All Cosmos scolds the Prince for failure while ominously standing in the dark. Despite the serious mood of the scene, the flashes of lightning in the rain give glimpses at the King making goofy poses like gesturing a dog's head with his hands.
• Game Mod: The PC version of Katamari Damacy REROLL has one that restores the English Dubbed cutscenes, for those who would prefer the dub over the sub.
• Golden Snitch: The minimum requirement in second-to-last level is 30m. The minimum requirement in the final level is 300m, with the final Eternal Mode map being unlocked at 800m. Needless to say, completing the final level severely skews your combined diameter records.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • None of the tutorials or hints let you know that the katamari can climb walls. Using this, depending on your current size, can let you take shortcuts and access walled areas early. Further, if a wall has a ladder or steps on it, you can climb it indefinitely, which is the only way to get certain objects and presents. The trouble is that the game's physics consider touching the wall under any circumstances to be a collision, which is something you don't want. The game almost seems to be discouraging trying this - no matter how slowly you roll up to the wall, so much as bumping it will cause a crash and likely a few objects knocked loose, making rolling forward against the wall feel counter-intuitive. Thankfully, every game afterward starting with We ♥ Katamari makes climbing walls part of the tutorial, showing you how to do it safely.
  • Just try to roll up every item in the game on your own. We dare you. With how many items there are only one of, not to mention how deviously hidden they tend to be (one item is literally submerged in a completely random spot in the ocean, with absolutely no indication whatsoever that there's anything even there), you'll be running to a walkthrough soon enough.
• It Was Here, I Swear!: During the Hoshino family's storyline, Mutsuo Hoshino briefly glimpses the King of All Cosmos out the window of the plane they're flying in, but during the moment he turns to his mother to try and point him out to her, he's disappeared, leaving mother Mizue to just comment they're almost at their destination, while the son to mutters to himself that he definitely saw that big man moments ago.
• Last Lousy Point: There are two words that will send shivers down the spines of anyone who's gone for 100% item collection: 4th. Step. It can only be found in one specific level^*Make a Star 7, and it moves around randomly. Underwater. Where it's literally invisible. Even if you know the general area it can be found in, actually getting it still amounts to a roll of the dice due to its random movement. It's so notoriously frustrating that it was literally the only object whose location was changed in REROLL, making it worlds easier to get.
• Meaningful Name: "Katamari" means a "lump" or "mass" and "Damacy" is a corruption of "Damashii/Tamashii" for "spirit" (as in "team spirit"). So it basically means "A love of rolling things into lumps".
• Monster Misogyny: Played for Laughs when the father-son pair of aliens decide they must capture a ton of female Earthlings (figurines and statues also count) to ignite them in outer space and recreate the Virgo constellation.
• Post-End Game Content: The Prince's Cousins are added as collectibles on each level after clearing "Make the Moon".
• Rage Quit: Apparently, while the King was trying to roll up a Katamari for Ursa Major and Taurus, the bear/cow that he rolled up escaped, prompting him to do this and have the Prince take his place.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Cheesecake item description hints that its shape looks oddly familiar.
  • The description for the Taiko Drum reads, "Japanese drums and some sticks. Someone made a really cool game with these".
  • Whenever Michiru Hoshino says "I feel the cosmos!" she is paraphrasing Saint Seiya, another series that plays off the Zodiac.
• Stylistic Suck: The cutscenes have very Limited Animation.
• Theme Music Power-Up: "Katamari on the Rocks" plays in the final stage as you recreate the Moon.