Katamari Damacy
Review
2025-10-13
Of all the music I've listened to and loved in my life, the only music that has consistently traveled with me for the past 20 years, from my Zune to every iPhone since then, is the full Katamari discography. I know every song, every remix across the numerous sequels and re-releases. Every lyric, every melody, every key change is burned into my brain. It is probably the most incredible marrying of music with gameplay as has ever been created and ever will be created. It's almost as if whoever put it together had themselves a giant Katamari picking up records from every genre on the planet and then shot it up into the sky, a glorious mishmash of audio joy shining down on us for all eternity.
"Joy" would be my one word review of Katamari Damacy. It starts with that intro theme, it continues when you understand the plot is to clean up after a funky, sexy deity who got drunk and destroyed the universe, when you grapple with the dual analog-stick controls, when you pick up your first item, when you hit your first size up and the camera changes perspective, when you roll over your first person and their car and their house. It is a game overflowing with simple effervescent fun, the perfect game a child's mind would create, the perfect game an adult's mind wishes they could create. It is colorful, it is blocky, it is bright and loud, and moving, always moving.
There is nothing like Katamari Damacy. There should be. It's been twenty years since Keita Takahashi gave us the Prince and his ball and no one, not even him, has been able to hit that perfect pitch of simple engaging gameplay, bright colors, humor, and incomparable soundtrack since then. Don’t get me wrong, we got a couple great sequels and numerous repackaged, re-releases (blegh) and I was thankful, especially as my Katamari music folder grew. But wouldn’t it have been great if Katamari Damacy had blown up, caught on as a new strain of weird, insane, fun games for us to have been playing produced by other developers and companies for the last twenty years? Well, I’m still thankful. Especially given we’re getting the first real new console Katamari since Beautiful Katamari. More music ♫♥ !
And how could I talk about the music so much and not include some top picks:
???
Katamari Damacy is one of those game that I loved as soon as I played it. And it's a love that has never ended. It's still a tremendously fun game to play to this day.
It's such a simple concept but such a fun one. You roll stuff up, you get bigger, you can roll bigger things, you have a time limit and try to get to a certain size. The way they layout the levels so that you start very small and then grow very large is amazing. The sense of scale and progression is really, really good. And, you know, that alone would make a great game. But of course there's a couple other reasons this game is amazing.
First of all it has a certain charm. It's very Japanese. It's very weird. The fact that the premise for the game is some sort of kind of interplanetary deity getting drunk and blowing up the galaxy and you have to rebuild it is amazing. The fact that he's like this super groovy weird King dude it amazing well. But then the kind of clunky blocky graphics add a whole 'nother level of charm as well.
And the music. Oh, the music. Perhaps the most enduring part of my love for this series of games-- maybe for any game ever-- is because the music. I have listened to the soundtracks for all of these games for going on 2 decades. It never gets old. It runs the gamut from jazz to electronic to pop to big band to techno-- everything. Oh what a joy it is to play with that music playing.
It's a masterpiece. Truly.