TBT Katamari Damacy

The first time I ever played Katamari Damacy is a pretty vivid memory; not only because Katamari is such a peculiar and bizarre game, but because we had a bunch of people over for my brother's birthday. I can't remember exactly why I had invited some of my friends over, since it was never really customary to have friends over during a family party. In any case, Katamari had released earlier that week, and one of my friends brought it over. Not knowing it at the time, a ludicrous addiction to this series will have been born.

You take on the role of the King of all Cosmos' son. The King is always very aloof, all his son (you) want is his approval. Being such a majestic man, nothing is ever good enough and no matter what you do, he will always put you down. Sounds very harsh yes, but it actually just adds to the experience and hilarity of the game.

The King

Katamari Damacy isn't a very hard game to describe as weird as it might sound. You're essentially rolling around a ball of garbage (referred to as a Katamari; which means mass or cluster in Japanese) and anything you roll over that is smaller then you get added to your mass. You start off small, picking up erasers on a desk for instance; eventually you'll get so large you'll encompass the whole building.

The Prince and his Katamari

It's charmingly simple, yet has spawned many incarnations after gaining popularity for its off the wall craziness. I own like 4 different versions of this game. Even though they're quite similar, I just couldn't get enough content.

Each one went far beyond what the previous ever did in terms of scale however. The first only ever had you getting as big as a continent. Fast forward and they have you rolling Katamaries the size of galaxies.

Everything about this game oozes personality, from the odd yet mesmerizing music, to the ever simplistic visual design.

Some of the music is quite jazzy; others have an electronic flair to them, always very fitting though. My all time favorite being this song:

I used to play the stage with this song on it all the time because it was the only way I could hear it. Nowadays, it's so simple to just go on Youtube and find a song (any song) from a game/tv show/commercial, heck you can probably even find that cool elevator music you heard that one time. Not then, my only way, roll that katamari... I love the music in this game.

If I had to pick a reason why I love this series so much, it would have to be because it's a game you can just play. No thinking, no worries, just play. In an age when people run around with too much on their plate, it's kind of nice to just sit down for a moment and play.