() is a 2004 action puzzle video game developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2. The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild stars, constellations, and the Moon, which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to human beings to mountains, until the ball has grown large enough to become a star. Katamari Damacys story, settings and characters are highly stylized and surreal, often both celebrating and satirizing facets of Japanese culture.
Designer Keita Takahashi struggled to pitch the game to Namco's superiors, eventually seeking student aid from the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory to develop the project for less than 1 million. As director, Takahashi emphasized concepts of novelty, ease of understanding, and enjoyment.
Katamari Damacy received critical acclaim, becoming a surprise hit and winning several awards. Its success led to the creation of the greater Katamari franchise, and inspired numerous subsequent games imitating its quirky, colorful charm. Certain critics have hailed it as a cult classic and one of the greatest video games of all time, praising its gameplay, replay value, humor, originality, and Shibuya-kei soundtrack. A high-definition remaster of the game, was released by Namco's successor Bandai Namco Entertainment for Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2020, and Google Stadia in September 2021.
Plot
In a drunken stupor, an eccentric, god-like entity called the King of All Cosmos destroys all the stars, Earth's Moon and other such celestial bodies in the universe, except for Earth itself. Despite acknowledging his mistake, the King charges his five-centimeter-tall son, the Prince, to go to Earth with a "Katamari"—a magical ball that allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow—and collect enough material for him to recreate the stars and the Moon. The Prince is successful, and the universe is returned to normal.
Gameplay
left|thumb|The "Make A Star" mode in Katamari Damacy is the primary mode, where the player must grow the katamari to a specific size (diameter) in a limited amount of time.
The player controls the Prince as he rolls the katamari around houses, gardens, and towns in order to meet certain parameters set by the King of All Cosmos. The player uses the two analog sticks on the DualShock controller in a manner similar to the classic arcade game Battlezone to control the direction the katamari rolls. Other controls can be triggered by the player to gain a quick burst of speed, flip the Prince to the other side of the katamari and more.
Each level features two secret items that can be found. The first item is a royal present that contains an object that the Prince can wear. Most gifts are non-functional, but one includes a camera that can be used to take in-game screenshots. During his studies, he came to a philosophy that his art needed to combine practical elements along with a bit of whimsy and humor. After graduation, Takahashi no longer had the desire to pursue sculpting as a full-time career, and saw the potential to become involved in video games as a means to continue his art interest in a larger medium.
Takahashi took Ozaki's advice, joining the project to help produce the prototype for his game. Alongside about ten students from the Digital Hollywood program, he had been able to gain some visual design artists from Namco to help with the prototype but had difficulty in getting any game development engineers, due to the low priority of the school. He was fortunate to find that some of the engineers from Namco's arcade game division were going to be laid off, and he was able to convince three of them to join his team to retain their jobs within Namco. The full game took a year and a half to develop, with eight months of prototyping from the Digital Hollywood version.
Takahashi said that the team was aiming for four key points in developing the game: novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humor. Toru Iwatani compared the game to his own, Pac-Man, which focused on simplicity and innovation and served as a template for future games from the company.
Music
The soundtrack for Katamari Damacy was released in Japan as Katamari Fortissimo Damacy. Its eclectic composition featured elements of traditional electronic video game music, as well as heavy jazz and samba influences (Shibuya-kei). Most of the tracks were composed by Yuu Miyake, and many feature vocals from popular J-pop singers, such as Yui Asaka from the Sukeban Deka 3 TV series, and anime voice actors, including Nobue Matsubara and Ado Mizumori. One track is sung and written by Charlie Kosei, composer of the Lupin III soundtrack.
Release
A single-level demonstration of the final version of Katamari Damacy was exhibited at the 2003 Tokyo Game Show (TGS). The demo was critically praised by the press, with GameSpots Jeff Gerstmann describing it as a "good dose of weird fun". Sony expressed strong interest in pushing the game's release forward based on the TGS response, offering to handle the game's promotion in exchange. Sony advertised the game on numerous billboards and posters across Japan, and created an infamous television ad of a businessman, waiting for an appointment, rolling up office furniture and staff. The original prototype game's cover artwork featured the large red ball used in tamakorogashi, The game was never officially released in Europe, though its subsequent sequels would receive European releases.
In Japanese, means "clump" or "clod" and Damashii is the rendaku form of which means "soul" or "spirit". Therefore, the phrase approximates to "clump spirit" or "clump of spirits". The two kanji that form the name look similar (sharing the same right-side element 鬼), in a kind of visual alliteration. The name is officially transliterated as Katamari Damacy in most releases. Game creator Keita Takahashi said that the title suddenly popped into his head from the start and never changed during development.
Reception
Katamari Damacy enjoyed moderate success in Japan. The game was sold at about two-thirds of the price of a new game at the time. It was the top-selling game the week of its release with 32,000 units sold, Namco, however, originally estimated that over 500,000 units would be sold in Japan.
The game was not released in PAL territories such as Europe and Australia since publishers thought it was too "quirky" for these markets; Electronic Arts picked up both sequels, We Love Katamari and Me & My Katamari, for release in Europe.
In North America the game was acclaimed by critics, and was mentioned and praised on TechTV, and was a featured sidebar in the May 2004 edition of Time magazine. Time continued to praise the game in its November 2004 "Best games of the year" special, calling it "the most unusual and original game" for PlayStation 2. Most retailers underestimated the demand for such a quirky game, and only purchased a few copies of this sleeper hit; it rapidly sold out nationwide, with sales surpassing 120,000 units in North America. It also won the U.S. award for "Excellence in Game Design" at the 2005 Game Developers Choice Awards, and G4 awarded Katamari Damacy its "Best Innovation" prize in its G-Phoria of that year. Katamari Damacy was one of the recipients of the 2004 Good Design Award in Japan, the first time a video game has won this award. During the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Katamari Damacy with "Outstanding Innovation in Console Gaming" and "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", as well as receiving nominations for "Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition". GameSpot named it the best PlayStation 2 game of September 2004. It later won the publication's year-end "Best Puzzle/Rhythm Game", "Best Original Music" and "Most Innovative Game" awards across all platforms.
In 2015, the game placed 13th on USgamers The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2019, it was ranked 49th on The Guardian newspaper's "The 50 Best Video Games of the 21st Century" list.
Although the game has rapidly achieved a cult following and has been praised by many reviewers, it also has its share of criticism. A common complaint is that the game is relatively short and repetitive—it can be completed in under ten hours, and the gameplay stays virtually the same all the way through. Others, however, such as Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewer Mark McDonald (who gave the game 8.5 out of ten with his EGM staff), argue that the game's limitations, such as having "basically ... the same" objective in each level, are made up by its strengths, like "elegant" controls, its soundtrack, and "wicked" humor. As a well-executed, non-traditional game, Katamari Damacy has been influential in the game development community. Since its release, a number of other games have been inspired by Katamari, such as The Wonderful End of the World and Donut County.
Legacy
Katamari Damacy has spawned numerous sequels on the PlayStation 2 and newer game consoles. The game's direct sequel on the PlayStation 2, We Love Katamari, was released internationally in 2005 and 2006. Its story is self-referential, following on the success of the first game, most of the levels are based on requests from newfound fans of the King and the Prince. Though sharing the same mechanics, We Love Katamari introduces new gameplay features, such as co-operative play, and new goals, such as collecting the most valuable objects, that would continue through its sequels.
On July 29, 2012, the game was included in an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, entitled "Century of the Child: Growing by Design". Here, the game was used to demonstrate the change in toys and "playthings" over the 20th century, specifically praising the game for its "quirky manipulations of scale" that makes it accessible for all ages. Vice president of marketing for Namco Bandai Games America, Inc. Carlson Choi described the inclusion of Katamari Damacy to the exhibit as "a testament to the creative designs embodied in Namco Bandai's games, in addition to being a validation of video games as a modern form of interactive art". On November 29 of the same year, the game was included in the permanent collection of video games of the Museum of Modern Art. Curator Paola Antonelli selected Katamari Damacy among the first fourteen games to be displayed in the museum, which was chosen according to a variety of criteria, including "visual quality, elegance of the code and design of playing behavior".
A high-definition remaster of the game developed by Monkey Craft and made with Unity, titled Katamari Damacy Reroll, was released on the Nintendo Switch and Windows on December 7, 2018. Known as Katamari Damacy Encore in Japan, it is the first title in Bandai Namco Entertainment's Encore series of remasters. The game includes support for the Switch's gyro controls in addition to its traditional control scheme. Reroll was nominated for the Freedom Tower Award for Best Remake at the 2020 New York Game Awards. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions were released in November 2020. A version for Amazon Luna became available on March 4, 2021, and a Stadia version in September of the same year.
In a retrospective in 2019, Edge noted that playing the game 15 years after its initial release reveals how influential the game has been for independent games following it, and added that Takahashi's game is "playful and tremendously funny, deeply weird and a game with real heart".