Sometimes you just need some outside influence to get things moving. 2004 was not a difficult time for the games industry, the PlayStation 2 was riding high with solid, and differential, competition in the form of the GameCube and Xbox. The shocks of the Nintendo DS[1], and PlayStation Portable were yet to come and publishers were going through a series of cash cows yet Namco decided that a risk was necessary which came from a Namco sponsored university.
Keita Takahashi created and developed Katamari Damacy but at the time he joined Namco, he didn't even own a PlayStation.
Here was an unashamedly quirky game, with the aim to roll up everything you could see. And for once, everything was pretty close to the reality of it.
It was rubbish, yet brilliant. Placed behind a small ball with attractive powers, you had to roll a ball of rubbish (well, items you had picked up) bigger and bigger until... it was big enough. Your motivation for doing so? So that the King Of All Cosmos would praise you, a little, and so that he could repopulate the universe with stars. It didn't really make much sense in each part but it all made sense together and it was a terrifically different game and seemed to take a path away from the well-trodden route. Here was a game that had simple controls (using both analogue sticks like a tank controls), a very easy to understand mechanic and simple, clear graphics. As games consoles evolved, they generally became more complex with more options to control and fewer opportunities to learn how to use them in playful environments. It was a casual game before they really existed (and not casual as we understand it at all) as it was accessible and it tried to be nothing other than a game. Each level asked you to create a ball of stuff up to a certain size (if you surpassed it, you opened up the next level but you could keep going, score attack style, until time was up) from wherever you are. Starting off in a house, you can roll up bits of food, batteries, shoes etc until you get bigger and bigger. As your ball gets larger, you can start rolling up larger items so that the items, such as a plate of noodles, that you once rolled over, will now become part of your ball. It is a simple system that anyone can get. And it is kind of fun, but also a bit humdrum after a while until, until, you get large enough to pick up cats - and then dogs. And then people. Every single person I have persuaded to play this has really, visibly, perked up once they can pick people up - at that point it becomes compelling[2]. Worryingly.
It does not stop at people and soon there are bikes you can roll up, and then cars, and then trucks and so on and so on until you can pick up complete buildings. It is great fun, bringing to mind classic monster movies and games such as "Rampage".
To go with the simple graphics and charming narrative and characters was an excellently varied soundtrack of in-house music.
At a time when the shift to more realism (and away from the Japanese development teams) seemed to be started, this was well appreciated by many and the game did very well in Japan on domestic release. It did well enough without the big marketing or development budget to see a later release in North America and Korea but not the UK (although a sequel was released and later versions have been released in Europe too). Arguably, the success may have partially created the casual boom of the next few years as simple controls became de rigeur with touch screens and motion control. Maybe it didn't, and maybe all the wrong things were taken from it, but I can't help but feel it was a waypoint of sorts.
Killer Instinct - When all arcades needed overblown beat 'em ups, here was the competition for Mortal Kombat - but not Capcom.
King of Fighters '98 - When all arcades needed overblown beat 'em ups, here was the competition for Capcom - but not Mortal Kombat. Technical, SNK.
Killer 7 - Part of the GC Capcom 5, a stylish if slightly offbeat take on the shooter games.
1. I have a personal theory that one of the worst things to happen to the games industry, in Japan especially, was the success of the Nintendo DS in expanding the market. I lived in Japan at the time of release and the DS was ludicrously popular. I saw it being advertised everywhere and I saw it on public transport all the time but, in hindsight, I am not sure I saw it being played all that often. The two games I remember most strongly were Brain Training and Nintendogs - both of which did very well indeed and, arguably, neither were really games in the widely accepted sense of the word. At this time, the games shops were full of DS games in a similar vein, those that were casual - things like spot the difference, dictionaries etc etc. These "games" were so simple to make, cheap to create and requiring almost no thought within the development phase (I am not denying that some of these games, especially the Nintendo games such as Nintendogs, were not carefully and lovingly crafted) that it seemed silly for publishers to not chance their arm. Why spend time and effort on a new game with carefully balanced gaming mechanics if the simplest of games could sell more copies? And so, it all fell apart. This is just my opinion though and a footnote is not somewhere to expand on it!↩
2. And obviously, you can pick people up only depending on their size so you can first pick little people up. Or children, as they are often known.↩
Keita Takahashi created and developed Katamari Damacy but at the time he joined Namco, he didn't even own a PlayStation.
It was rubbish, yet brilliant. Placed behind a small ball with attractive powers, you had to roll a ball of rubbish (well, items you had picked up) bigger and bigger until... it was big enough. Your motivation for doing so? So that the King Of All Cosmos would praise you, a little, and so that he could repopulate the universe with stars. It didn't really make much sense in each part but it all made sense together and it was a terrifically different game and seemed to take a path away from the well-trodden route. Here was a game that had simple controls (using both analogue sticks like a tank controls), a very easy to understand mechanic and simple, clear graphics. As games consoles evolved, they generally became more complex with more options to control and fewer opportunities to learn how to use them in playful environments. It was a casual game before they really existed (and not casual as we understand it at all) as it was accessible and it tried to be nothing other than a game. Each level asked you to create a ball of stuff up to a certain size (if you surpassed it, you opened up the next level but you could keep going, score attack style, until time was up) from wherever you are. Starting off in a house, you can roll up bits of food, batteries, shoes etc until you get bigger and bigger. As your ball gets larger, you can start rolling up larger items so that the items, such as a plate of noodles, that you once rolled over, will now become part of your ball. It is a simple system that anyone can get. And it is kind of fun, but also a bit humdrum after a while until, until, you get large enough to pick up cats - and then dogs. And then people. Every single person I have persuaded to play this has really, visibly, perked up once they can pick people up - at that point it becomes compelling[2]. Worryingly.
It does not stop at people and soon there are bikes you can roll up, and then cars, and then trucks and so on and so on until you can pick up complete buildings. It is great fun, bringing to mind classic monster movies and games such as "Rampage".
To go with the simple graphics and charming narrative and characters was an excellently varied soundtrack of in-house music.
It's great that there are many types of videogames, but I've always wanted to create something different that can only be done in a game. If you are going to play a game that resembles a movie, you should just watch a movie, and if you are going to play a game that shows realistic cars, wouldn't it be more fun to drive a real car?3 other K titles that might be interesting:
Killer Instinct - When all arcades needed overblown beat 'em ups, here was the competition for Mortal Kombat - but not Capcom.
King of Fighters '98 - When all arcades needed overblown beat 'em ups, here was the competition for Capcom - but not Mortal Kombat. Technical, SNK.
Killer 7 - Part of the GC Capcom 5, a stylish if slightly offbeat take on the shooter games.
1. I have a personal theory that one of the worst things to happen to the games industry, in Japan especially, was the success of the Nintendo DS in expanding the market. I lived in Japan at the time of release and the DS was ludicrously popular. I saw it being advertised everywhere and I saw it on public transport all the time but, in hindsight, I am not sure I saw it being played all that often. The two games I remember most strongly were Brain Training and Nintendogs - both of which did very well indeed and, arguably, neither were really games in the widely accepted sense of the word. At this time, the games shops were full of DS games in a similar vein, those that were casual - things like spot the difference, dictionaries etc etc. These "games" were so simple to make, cheap to create and requiring almost no thought within the development phase (I am not denying that some of these games, especially the Nintendo games such as Nintendogs, were not carefully and lovingly crafted) that it seemed silly for publishers to not chance their arm. Why spend time and effort on a new game with carefully balanced gaming mechanics if the simplest of games could sell more copies? And so, it all fell apart. This is just my opinion though and a footnote is not somewhere to expand on it!↩
2. And obviously, you can pick people up only depending on their size so you can first pick little people up. Or children, as they are often known.↩
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