I've been having this dream lately. Sometimes it comes to me when I'm only half asleep, lying in bed unable to focus my thoughts, and sometimes it comes to me while I'm in a deep trance, memories swirling around my mind in a disorganized manner. But yet this dream is always the same. In the dream I'm rolling a large ball around, picking up the various objects cluttered around my room. A pile of dirty socks latches onto the ball, each one accompanied by a pleasant “bloop” noise. Next I roll over my computer, and it latches on awkwardly, causing my ball to roll a bit differently, in a more awkward manner than before. I bump into a stool, and realize I'm not yet large enough to pick it up. I continue onwards, rolling and rolling this ball, letting it grow larger and larger, picking up more and more items, until it eventually grows so large I can't fit it through the doorway. At this point a floating head shows up and lets me know the time limit is up. I watch in fascination as he sucks me and my ball up into a bright spectrum of color.

Then I wake up.

Katamari Damacy has taken root somewhere deep in my brain, and it isn't letting go anytime soon.

For the uninitiated, “Katamari Damacy,” which translates to “Clump Soul,” is a bizarre budget title from Namco that has been garnering more and more interest ever since it originally came out in Japan. It's one of those truly odd games that makes you wonder how it ever made it out of home country. Thankfully, Namco realized that this game's brilliance should be experienced by all, and they've released it here in the states for a paltry $20. My own quest for this game was an arduous one, finding little more than strange glances at the first few retail outlets I checked. My quest finally came to an end at a Gamestop many miles from my home, where the manager responded to my inquiry with “Oh, you mean that rolly-ball game? Yeah, I saw that on G4.” I chose not to comment on this man's choice in cable networks and instead returned home triumphant with my prize.

Oh yeah, I guess I bought Gradius V that day too. That game is sweet.

Ahem

When I first booted the game up I wasn't really sure what to expect. Aside from a few screenshots and online associates swearing up and down about how addictive the game was, I was still in the dark about exactly what I was in for. I booted the game up, and listened as the game's trademark “na na na na” theme started to play.

These days I've begun to hum that song while I sleep.

Right from the get-go I knew this game wasn't going to be like anything I had ever experienced. The opening bombards you with so many colors and images your brain starts to spin. Cows, rainbows, mushrooms, giraffes, balloons, ducks, pandas, all combining to form a truly bizarre visual cornucopia. Every time I boot up the game I am unable to resist watching the opening. It's just beautiful in its randomness, brilliant in its simplicity. These characteristics hold true for the rest of the game as well. Something so bizarre that you can't help but watch, and be pulled deeper and deeper into it. Whenever I show somebody the game, I force them to watch the opening, so they can feel the same sense of wonder I got when I first watched, so I can see the strange sense of confused awe that overcomes them.

Trying to explain Katamari Damacy to someone is somewhat of an impossible task. Believe me, I've tried several times to tell my friends that “they have to try this crazy ball rolling game,” only to be rewarded with confused looks and comments like “Chris, why do you only buy crazy Japanese games? Why can't you just play Halo like everyone else?” I just wanted to find somebody who would listen to me about how great it was, about how brilliant and original it was, about how nothing compared to the pure unbridled joy that came from bowling through a crowd of screaming Japanese schoolchildren. But no one seemed to care. You can't explain Katamari Damacy the way you explain other games. You can't tell people about how you can have sex with a hooker and then beat her to death with a baseball bat and get your money back, or how totally awesome the bump-mapping is. Because Katamari Damacy doesn't have those things. All Katamari Damacy has is a ball that you roll around and attach stuff to. I mean, there’s no way to tell people how exciting that really is. I soon realized that there was no way to express… no words to describe the complete elation I got from playing this game. And it tore me up inside, because I wanted to somehow share this game with the world.

But for a few days I was alone, rolling katamari in my head as I slept.

A few days after I had given up on trying to tell people about the game, two of my friends came over as I was playing. I welcomed them in and we shuffled into the den where I had been playing the game. Then they asked me what I had been playing. At first I thought of explaining the game to them, but instead I just thrust the controller into their hands, telling them little other than “Use the analog sticks.”

Two hours later I was begging them to leave my house. They were addicted, the same as I was. And I soon learned the only way to truly understand the game's brilliance is to play it, the only way to know the joy it brings is to feel it.

Katamari Damacy isn't a game you play, it's a game you feel.

...of course, all this comes before describing the game itself, so let me get down to that.

In Katamari Damacy, you play as the prince of all cosmos, a tiny 10cm tall creature with an elongated head and spiffy green outfit. One day your father, the king of all cosmos, gets drunk and goes flying recklessly around the universe, managing to singlehandedly destroy all the stars in the sky. After realizing what he's done he hands the task down to you of going to earth and creating new stars out of the objects you find.

This is where Katamari Damacy begins.

In order to create these stars, the prince must roll a strangely shaped, multi-colored ball, called a katamari, over the various objects scatted about the levels. These objects latch onto the katamari, becoming part of it, causing it to become larger. Your purpose is to create the largest, most massive katamari that you can. You start off small, picking up thumbtacks and erasers, but as you pick up more and more objects your katamari grows larger and larger, in turn allowing you to pick up even bigger items like animals, then people, then buildings, and then eventually entire islands. There's this incredible sense of scale you get when you start off rolling underneath a car, and then eventually move on to picking up that same car. This is one of the main drawing points of Katamari Damacy. Watching the gradual growth of this tiny little katamari into a gigantic city-destroying ball of doom. It’s just fascinating to watch. There's also this amazing sense of euphoria the first time you realize you can finally start picking up people. Though the various items scattered around the levels are all interesting in their uniqueness, chasing after fleeing civilians is a million times more pleasurable. And while most items simply attach to your ball with a simple “bloop” sound, the people reward you with their screams of terror. The collective symphony of screams you get when your ball is large enough to suck up entire cities is one of the most satisfying parts of the game, and it made all the more ridiculous when contrasted with the incredibly upbeat and joyous soundtrack. Imagine people screaming in absolute terror as “It’s a small world” plays in the background. It’s kind of like that.

The goal of the main levels is to get the katamari to a certain size within the time limit. This is where the game's true challenge lies. You want to pick up the largest items your katamari can handle as quickly as possible. It sounds simple, but there's actually a few degrees of complexity to the formula. If you waste time picking up small objects like dice, or move onto a new area with objects your katamari isn't large enough to pick up, you'll suddenly wonder where all the time went when the king of all cosmos announces you have sixty seconds left before he gets tired of watching and the level ends. You also have to consider the shape of the objects you're assimilating into the katamari. Picking up a large object like a guardrail will increase the size of your katamari greatly, but will also cause your katamari to become misshapen and awkward to roll. There's a need to maneuver your ball properly so the objects attach themselves in a certain equilibrium with the other objects. However, probably the most important factor to succeeding in Katamari Damacy is mastering the controls. The katamari is controlled completely with the two analog sticks, and although the controls are easy enough to pick up, they take time to properly master. You won't start getting your katamari to a truly huge size unless you learn to gain total control over it, to let the rolling become a part of you. Eventually, it becomes like second nature, as though the rolling is an extension of your self, and you achieve an almost zen-like connection with the rolling. The rolling becomes you.

I can feel the rolling even now. Thumbs gently gliding over analog sticks that aren’t there. But I can feel them, I can feel the rolling.

It’s euphoric.

In addition to the ten main “Make a Star” stages, there are nine different constellations stages, where your task is to create various constellations like Taurus and Cancer. These stages provide simple variations on the game's main premise. For Cancer, the size of the katamari no longer matters, now your katamari is judged by how many crabs it contains. These stages provides a certain sense of order to an otherwise chaotic game, giving you an actual mission to accomplish rather than just rolling over whatever you can find. The game also sports a versus mode, where you can choose from the prince or one of his twenty three unlockable cousins, and go head to head against a friend to see who can make the larger katamari. This is one of the few parts of the game that feels like it could've been so much greater. The versus mode is restricted to a small circular arena, and the items are now scattered in circular patterns, reducing strategy to little other than “move to the outer ring of items and roll around the circle.” It lacks the disorganized item layout the core gameplay features, and there’s little substance to this lackluster versus mode. I guess the ability to roll up your own opponent is a bit humorous, but otherwise the versus mode is rather forgettable. I can understand the kind of problems that would arise in rendering twice the amount of objects onscreen, but the ideal versus mode would be to have each player roll around the city independently, each trying to get larger than the other. But sadly, this is not the case.

The game engine itself is fairly solid. Occasionally there will be the problem of your gigantic katamari getting trapped in the small space between something like a lamppost and a corner, but it's usually your fault for trying to wedge a gigantic ball of stuff into such a small space anyhow. And despite the hundreds, sometimes thousands of objects that litter the levels, there is surprisingly almost no slowdown. In fact, the first (and only) time I ever experienced slowdown I was actually quite surprised, as up to that point it had been completely non-existent. The objects themselves are comprised of a very low polygon count which makes it possible to have so many things on screen at once. Some have been disappointed with the somewhat lackluster graphics, but it really lends a unique visual style to the game that is easily appreciated. Most objects are simple flat shaded polygons, with a few details that let you differentiate coins from cookies and so on. They graphics are simple, but bright and colorful. The entire game world looks like one gigantic children's book, a world littered with a lot of heart.

Perhaps one of the greatest features of Katamari Damacy is the brilliant soundtrack. You wouldn't of thought it possible to have so many different songs about rolling up stars, but the soundtrack boasts an impressive 15 or so tracks, each of which with it's own unique sound that spectacularly complements the addictive gameplay. Several of the songs incorporate little snippets of the game's trademark theme, and a broad sampling of genre's are covered, from the Sinatra-esque “Que Sera Sera,” to the scarily beautiful children's choir song “Cherry Blossom Color Season.” Clearing all the regular and constellation stages you can unlocks the moon memorial, where all the music tracks are available for your listening pleasure. It really is worth just sitting down and listening to the music, all of it is uniquely wonderful, and it's one of the best gaming soundtracks I've seen in a while. The only thing I wish Namco would've done is give you the ability to choose the song you want to listen to rather than making them level specific, but aside from that the music is just great.

Katamari Damacy hearkens back to a simpler time, when games were made by tiny development teams for small sums of money. The developers of early arcade and console games weren't concerned with creating lush visuals or complex interfaces, they were concerned with making their games fun. These days games can cost upwards of twenty million dollars to develop, and require massive development teams. But, Katamari Damacy only took about ten people and a million dollars, and to me it's a million times more enjoyable than any other game in recent memory. This game shows us that you don't need a giant development team and a lot of money to make a good games, you just need a concept that is inherently fun. I'm glad that in an industry where most people care about little other than first person shooters and RPGs, a game like this is garnering so much attention. I think we a lot of us had forgotten what makes a game, and it took a title like this to show us what we knew in our hearts all along. A game isn't about lush graphics, or realistic visuals. It isn't about navigating menus or pushing crates. And it isn't about spending millions of dollars to make the same game you made last year with a few changes.

It's about fun, and that's just what Katamari Damacy is. Pure uninhibited fun. The purest I've seen in a long, long time.

Sadly, as soon as this rampant katamari joy fest begins, it's over. The nineteen different stages can all be beaten in around three hours, and though they were possibly three of the greatest hours of my life, I felt almost unfulfilled afterwards, just wishing I could do it all over again. When the end credits began to roll I felt this sadness in my heart, like I was saying goodbye to a dear, dear friend. Truly, this is Katamari Damacy's only flaw, that, as they say, all good things must come to an end. Sure there's plenty of replay value. You can try to beat the levels fast enough to create the different comets, find all the different royal presents, attempt to roll up all of the 1,500 different items, race to beat your own high scores, or just spend countless hours rolling to your heart's content in the time-limitless “eternal” mode. But still, it's hard to experience something as great as Katamari Damacy, only to say goodbye so quickly.

But hey, Namco's already announced Katamari Damacy 2, so maybe there's hope after all.

And now, back to dreaming that wonderful dream...