20 Years Ago Katamari Damacy Became an Unlikely Sensation
Pretty much everything about Katamari Damacy, which came out in America 20 years ago tomorrow, is incredible, in a Can You Believe This Even Exists way. The game’s creator was Keita Takahashi, an artist for Namco. As an artist and specifically not a game designer, he didn’t have a clear method for pitching his game concept to higher ups at the studio, so instead, there was quite the workaround to get a proof of concept made to give it a chance to be approved.
As detailed in L.E. Hall’s book on Katamari Damacy, Takahashi worked in Namco’s school for potential developers, the Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory, and had students in his class help build a prototype of the game. There, he had fellow artists aplenty, but the only reason Takahashi had enough engineers for the project was because some of Namco’s were set to be laid off, but avoided that fate by joining his team at the Laboratory. Fortuitous for all involved.
Katamari Damacy was, obviously, accepted by Namco’s higher ups when the prototype was finally proposed. That doesn’t mean it had a massive swell of internal support behind it, however: the budget for Katamari Damacy was well under $1 million, or, less than one-tenth of what their budget was for more high-profile releases like in the Ridge Racer and SoulCalibur series—hey, it was a very different time, 20 years ago. 10 million bucks used to be considered a ballooning games development budget that had to be brought back down to Earth for the industry to survive.
Namco did believe in the game, though, even if they weren’t going to throw huge bags of money at it. Which is why, even though a circuitous route had to be taken for a prototype to be designed in the first place, executives like Tōru Iwatani, who was the head of Namco’s research and development department at the time, used it as an example of a game that even just conceptually the company was excited about:
“I think there are going to be a lot more genres opening up, and I see videogames branching out more in the future,” said Iwatani. “For example, there is a game that Namco has just released called Katamari Damashii. The title of this game does not translate well to English.
“That is one example of the kinds of games that I am referring to. It is an entirely new concept. Namco, as a company, has built itself on games like that, games with new concepts.”
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“You also see a trend with games becoming more and more complicated,” said Iwatani. “It’s difficult for the casual gamer to pick these up and enjoy them. Namco has been trying to put forth simpler games … games that are much more intuitive.”
It should be noted that Iwatani, in addition to his R&D role at the time, is the creator of Pac-Man—that’s someone who understands a simple concept that can grab the masses. It should also be noted that Namco’s massive success in the arcades in the 1980s had a lot to do with games like Pac-Man that utilized simple controls and concepts, executed in a way that made it difficult to walk away from them. And each with high-level reasons to keep playing, and playing, and playing once their initial simplicity and charm hooked you, because there was also a depth to them. They were always innovating and iterating and improving, and there’s a reason they had a run that included not just Pac-Man, but Dig-Dug, Galaga, Pole Position, Xevious, The Tower of Druaga, Dragon Buster, Final Lap… the list goes on. Rally-X introduced in-level music to arcade games. Pac-Land was essentially a proto-platformer that kickstarted that genre in ways with almost immediate, Mario-shaped consequences. One thing all of these games have in common—well, sure, maybe not Druaga—was their relative simplicity and ease of play. A button, two buttons, nothing overly complicated, with you already being hooked by the time you started to really care about making sure you only shot specific enemy ships in Galaga as they arrived to the stage, in order to maximize your point scoring.
This was the kind of creative spirit that continued on within Namco well beyond their magnificent ‘80s. Yes, something like 1999’s R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is much flashier and louder and bigger than Pole Position or Final Lap, but at its core, it’s still a game with just a few buttons to master, and a relatively simple goal. Gas, brake—really, the brake is optional if you’re killer with letting off the gas to start a drift—and shoulder buttons to switch gears. Master these basics, and you’ll look like you’re driving a much more complicated vehicle than you are. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile was a 2.5D platformer for the Playstation, taking advantage of the latest technology to present a vibrant, colorful, and very much alive game world with lively and playable backgrounds. Unlike the ever-growing and complicated 3D platformers of the time, Klonoa was designed with just two buttons in mind: one for grabbing and throwing, and one for jumping. That was no accident, as the game’s director, Hideo Yoshizawa, detailed in an interview in 2013: “The way I see it, human beings can only handle two buttons, when they’re really concentrating. My policy is to use two buttons maximum for any game… If there’s only two buttons, the controls are very simple, but there’s still a lot you can do with just two buttons.” Outside of one sequel on the Playstation 2, there’s a reason future Klonoa titles ended up on handhelds like the WonderSwan and Game Boy Advance, both of which had fewer buttons and were built for 2D.
This kind of simplicity would carry over into another project Yoshizawa would direct, Mr. Driller. It wasn’t his game idea—that would belong to Yasuhito Nagaoka—but it was Yoshizawa’s idea to turn this then-console title into an arcade game first, so that people would get to know what it was and not need it explained to them through marketing, or on the very packed Playstation game shelves at retail. Mr. Driller, by the way, uses a single button: one to drill. Everything else is done with the joystick/directional pad. It was a real throwback to Namco’s ‘80s, in terms of style and concept and simplicity, and with its bright colors and distinctive soundtrack, it stuck out in arcades overflowing with fighting games. And, like those old-school Namco arcade titles, Mr. Driller also ended up ported to or with sequels on pretty much every platform imaginable, whether considered over or underpowered.
Katamari Damacy, similarly, used just the dual analog sticks of the Playstation 2’s gamepad rather than most or all of it. There were advanced techniques that would require more skill to pull off, for dashing and quickly changing direction and the like, but you could get through Katamari’s early stages with the more basic maneuvers. It’s the kind of game that made Namco what it was two decades before they were in a position to make expensive and more complicated titles like in the Ace Combat and SoulCalibur series, before they were in a position to throw money at Monolith to make something as lengthy and involved as the Xenosaga trilogy.
Not to go all personal essay here, but Katamari Damacy also served as a reminder of what games could even be. It’s not that I was unfamiliar with Namco’s game at that point—Galaga is the root cause of every feature on shoot ‘em ups you’ve ever seen me publish in this space—but I was 18 years old in 2004, heading to college by the time Katamari Damacy came out, and very much moving toward what you’d expect someone in that age group in that time period to be as far as videogames went. Lots of shooters, lots of action, and less tolerance for things that were cute or weird than I had before, or would have again.
Katamari Damacy helped to cut through all of that, however. Like Mr. Driller, it was a budget release, rather than a full-priced game: both Namco’s admission that this wasn’t going to be something everyone would grab like any other game, but also an invitation to give it a shot. It became a cult classic that also managed to do well enough to spawn a bunch of sequels, and you won’t catch me arguing against it if you refer to it as one of the greatest games ever. It’s certainly not what I expected when I picked it up, but from the first notes of “The Na-Na Song,” you could tell there was something different going on here. Never mind when the title screen erupted into “Katamari on the Rocks” and decided to also challenge what you thought videogame music was at the same time it attempted to bowl you over with animals and mountains and rainbows and a massive man with an odd-shaped head playing a similarly huge acoustic guitar.
The soundtrack has still got this sense of awe that draws you in, too, as I’ve learned now that my kids have gotten a chance to hear and see Katamari Damacy. It’s not just the music, though. The sense of whimsy, the sheer oddball nature of the game not just on a conceptual level, but in terms of how it actually feels to play and see play out—you’re a diminutive prince of the cosmos rolling up literally anything you can find in order to produce stars because your dad got too drunk and rowdy one night and destroyed most of the universe in the process, but don’t worry, collect enough fish and matchsticks and you can solve this overnight—well, this is what helped remind me that all those cutesy games I had loved just a few years before were not just still excellent, but still around, too. Not everything was super serious, not everything had to be gloomy and violent and full of death. Sometimes, games could just be colorful, and simple, and fun. There was a time period where I was probably getting a little embarrassed about how much I love a Kirby game, but titles like Katamari Damacy helped remind me that there was never anything to be embarrassed about. God, people sometimes say they wish they were teenagers again, what is that about?
Katamari Damacy is 20 years old now, as it launched in 2004 in the spring in Japan and in September in North America. Namco has ensured that a new generation has a chance to experience it, thanks to the re-release of it on modern platforms known as Katamari Damacy REROLL, where it’s once again cheaper than your usual game at $30. If you’ve somehow never played Katamari Damacy for one reason or another—it seemed too weird, it seemed too different—then it’s time to change that, because those are exactly the reasons you should play it. And if you have played before? Well, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s worth the re-rolling, but you’ve been told, anyway.
Marc Normandin covers retro videogames at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Twitter at @Marc_Normandin.