Bring Back Katamari!

Back when the original Katamari Damacy came out, I was working at Toys R Us as manager of the electronic department stocking the new games that had come out that week. Back then there used to be a section for value games aka 19.99 and under. There was a new release game there I had never seen before that had released at the $19.99 price point. The cover was this:

This game perplexed me. Looking at the cover then, as smartphones weren’t super prevalent in 2004, they didn’t really become mainstream for another few years, was the only way to find out what a game was. You couldn’t google it, you might find an article on it online when you got home but if you wanted on the spot knowledge you had to rely on covers. The giant ball of junk, rainbows, cows…that’s pretty much all I needed. I purchased it right away as did one other employee after I brought up how crazy it seemed to him. Once I got home I popped it in and was treated with this intro….

That’s it, that’s all I needed I was all in. I played this game non-stop for a LONG time with zero regrets, and I introduced it to many many folks over the next few years. A few sequels came and went but not a ton of them came to console that were truly new games. But I still held on to every moment I could share with my beloved Katamari.

For those of you that may not know, Katamari is a series where basically you play as the Prince, the little green guy in the intro video, who is tasked with pushing around a large ball (Katamari) as you do that you can roll up and stick items on the ground as you go, eventually making the ball larger and larger to the point of lunacy in some of the games picking up continents and Godzilla monsters. But the fun in it is some amazing music and just a lot of laughs, overall the games are very simple physics-based (you can’t pick up a building until you grow your Katamari for example) and just a ton of fun to behold.

Most recently Katamari Damacy Reroll came out on PS4 and Xbox One a few weeks ago, Nintendo Switch had gotten this last year. Which is a remaster of the original game, which I can’t recommend enough. I had gotten it on the Nintendo Switch and I play on purchasing again for my Xbox Series console as well. If you are looking for just a fun family-friendly game with some songs bound to get stuck in your head. Check this one out. Fingers crossed once again they come out with a fresh game, I will be first in line!