S1E26 - Katamari Damacy

Welcome back to another episode of Disc Read Error, the podcast where every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the PlayStation Two.

I'm Derek Kicker. I'm Ian Golding. And this week, we're rolling up a big old ball of shit. Big old ball of shit in Katamari Damas. Gazuntite.

Got him.

You um.

Katamari Damase was released in Japan on March 18, 2004, and in North America on September 21, 2004.

Oh, wow.

That's a quick that's a quick turnaround.

Yeah.

Did you ever hear about this game.

When it came out?

I remember hearing quite a bit about this game when it came out.

Yeah, right.

It was like the weebs were losing their minds.

They were absolutely losing what minds?

I remember reading a write up about what the game was and being like, all right, that sounds very, very Japanese. And I don't know how there's much of a game there, and I do think I've either played a demo of it or even had it.

I know I played it.

Maybe I played it at my brother's scene. He had it. I'm not exactly sure.

I remember X play.

All the G Four shows were, like, losing their minds over this game.

You got to play this game.

And seeing the clips and seeing the screenshots of it, it was like, what.

The fuck is this? Yeah.

And I actually played the second game first.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah.

We love Catamari.

Is that what it's called?

We love Catamari.

Yeah, that's the second game. Very some might say it is the superior game.

I don't know.

Hard to say. I haven't played We Love Catamari in a long time. But this game was developed by legendary.

Video game company Namco.

This is pre buyout by Bandai.

Okay. Pre bandai namco.

And if you're not familiar with Namco, what are you what are you even doing?

What are you doing?

Like, what are you doing?

Pacman.

Gallagher. Zvius.

Yeah.

Soul Caliber. Anyone?

But the soul survives.

Soul caliber.

Mr. Driller.

Okay, now, I don't know what that.

Is, but you haven't played Mr. Driller on the old Game Boy.

Is it a whackoff game? It sounds like a Whackoff game.

No, it's a puzzle game.

Okay.

Time Crisis.

Time Crisis.

Holy shit.

Probably the greatest arcade shooter of all time.

I have absolute trouble disputing that.

I think the greatest arcade shooter of all time.

Yeah. The mechanic of hitting a pedal on.

The floor to duck. Brilliant.

Yeah. Is it to duck, or do you step on it to unduck?

I think you step on it to duck or you take cover.

Okay.

Yeah. Which is incredible.

And the gun has force feedback, right? A little bit of force feedback.

Yeah, I think so.

And don't you slam it on your palm to reload. There's something with reloading.

No, I think it's the standard shoot off screen.

Okay.

But, yeah, this game has recently been.

Rereleased, too, on the switch, of course, as Katamari Domic reroll. And it was also the reroll was released on the Stadia, that thing. That's great. And everyone knows about and uses the Amazon thing. That's the Google one.

Google, right. Okay.

No one knows what that is.

Yeah. That thing that was discontinued in January.

Of this year after being launched in.

Like, October of last year.

I guess it was launched in in 2019. November of 2019. And then COVID hit you would think I was just going to say that being released right before COVID COVID would have been a big boon for this kind of thing because the app and.

The console was only a controller. Pretty much. Right.

Yeah. Everything else was cloud based.

Yeah.

Controller for your phone.

The barrier of entry, as they say, is zero for that. And it's like a quibby same thing launched during COVID They're like, oh, it's because of COVID It's like yeah, because Streamers had such a problem during fucking COVID.

There's a bunch of goddamn morons that run companies that don't get that just because we're on our phones all day doesn't mean we're desperately trying to look for things to do on our phones. People don't watch TV on their phones.

Yeah.

I'm not going to watch four minute fucking segments of The Most Dangerous Game with Thor and Christophe Waltz on my fucking phone on the bus, guys.

Yeah. I also have no desire to play any console style video games on my phone.

No, of course not.

And if I did, I sure as fuck wouldn't want to do it through, like, some third party. I guess that's why something like the backbone makes sense. Because you can remote game on your PS Five or on your Xbox. That makes a little more sense.

Sure.

But ultimately, yeah. What a hunk of shit. But back to Katamari Domase sure. It was directed by Keita Takahashi.

Okay. Who isn't even like, a game person.

I believe he's like a civil engineer or something like that.

What?

I guess he was interviewed, obviously, about this game.

And he did this one in the second one. He didn't do any of the other ones. And he said that he eventually wants to move on from video games and design playgrounds for children.

Sure. Of course.

Which, I mean, cool lateral move, too, by the way. Like that's dope, I suppose. Yeah.

And I think that's what he's doing maybe now.

Yeah. If he's not fucking making games anymore. Yeah.

So that's cool. But this game I remember this game being, like, one of the first games to come over to be, like, aggressively non Westernized.

Yes.

And it being super well received.

Oh, yeah.

And I mean, they could have done a lot, right? Like, this game's not even, like fucking localized, really. Like, localization is in, like, the on screen text and that's about it. That's pretty much like the name, which means clump spirit, which is funny. The soundtrack wasn't really changed. The gameplay is, like, aggressively not Western. Very not Western, I think is great. It's a very happy game. There's something to be said about that. Like, you know, this is, like, the time. This is right before God of War. This is, like, an extremely nonviolent game.

Yes.

Yeah.

And this is like a joyful celebration of just fun mechanics, really.

Yeah.

But let's get into the story of this game because it does have a story. You don't have to care about it, though. But there is one.

Sure.

Here's the story. The king of all cosmos, basically, God sure gets fucking smashed. Getting drunk, taking some mushrooms, and he's spinning. He's like, everything in this world is so beautiful. I love it. I'm soaring through the cosmos. God, I really did a good job.

With all of this.

Cell five.

Yeah. But he's so drunk, he doesn't realize until it's too late that he's just crashing into stars, pretty much, and destroying them. So like any other benevolent being, he's like, OOH, really made a mess this time. He refers to himself in third person, too, which is funny.

Why wouldn't you?

And he goes to you, his son.

The prince, and is like, It's very funny.

Him talking about himself in third person is very funny because he starts saying.

Like.

We made this. Oh, we really made a mess this time. And until you get a little further in his opening dialogue, you're like, what is this we shit?

I had nothing to do with this dude.

So he tasks you, his five centimeter tall son yes. To go to Earth with a catamari, a magical ball that will pick up anything smaller than it yes. And collect enough material for him to.

Recreate the stars and the moon. That's it.

And if you are successful, then everything's cool.

And if you're not, fuck it. Yeah.

And that's basically a story. Now, there is some questionable fathering going on in this game.

Do you think the dad's I wouldn't.

Call him a good father or an attentive father.

Would you even really call him a father?

Kind of phoning it in? He leaves you gifts. Sometimes you find gifts on the levels, but it's like they're half ass.

Yeah.

He's an absentee father, for sure. I'd be interested in seeing who the prince's mother is.

I'd be interested to see who his secretary is, that he farms out this gift buying, too.

Yeah.

Give my kid a gift and leave it for me.

Oh, like liar. Liar.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's all there is for the story, really.

There is. There's not much more to it than that.

But that allows us to get into.

What makes this game so popular yes.

Which is the gameplay. It's hard to describe this game. This game is a difficult game to articulate.

Yeah.

Mainly because, like, it could be as simple as you're a ball. You're pushing a ball and the ball picks up shit, as long as it's smaller than your ball, you can pick it up with your ball. And the bigger your ball gets, the bigger things you can pick up. Right. And to beat a level, you have to get your ball to a certain size in a certain amount of time. Yes, that's like the simplest way of.

Explaining it, the broad strokes.

But I would say that the game gets a little more complicated than that. And complicated is probably the wrong word. This game gets a little more there's a little more diversity in this game than you would think. And even if that was the whole game, I don't even think that would detract from this game.

No, I don't think so either. Yeah, I agree.

So there are some levels where you have to pick up certain things, and if you pick up the wrong thing, it fucking ends your level. And those levels suck ass.

Suck fucking ass.

They suck. But I believe there's less of that in the sequel. Okay, but this game also pays, like.

No heed to gravity.

Physics doesn't matter. None of that matters.

That's all out the window as soon as you're the son of a fucking creature.

The king of all cosmos.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So you roll around, you're picking up stuff, and as the game progresses, you're picking up bigger and bigger stuff. You get to the point where eventually you're picking up continents. Now there's a reading of this game that you're basically going on a murder spree. Yes, there's a murder. You're destroying world. I am. Become death. You're basically destroyer of worlds. Yeah, but we're deciding not to think about that.

Yeah, I think we should avoid that genocide.

But what's cool about this game, too.

Is that the controls are very intuitive.

On the PlayStation Two. I think they're a little bit wonkier on the switch. I like the switch version. The switch version is obviously going to be the easier version to play than pulling out your PlayStation Two and of course, finding a copy of this game.

And getting a controller that's joysticks aren't destroyed.

But I think that's probably the better way to play this game. Though I will say the reroll is.

If you're looking to play this game, reroll is good. You get the experience right of this game.

So you use the two analog sticks, not in the way you think.

Yeah, the controls are a little different.

But once you kind of get roll, I would say up to the first level, you're pretty comfortable with it. But it's not like one controls movement, one controls camera. It's like they both control movement in different ways. Different combinations of the sticks do different things. So to turn around to flip stuff and getting to the control of the game is like the skill part of this game. And as you get better, you can go back to old levels, too, and try to get high scores, find the gifts. There's all kinds of little things you can collect.

Right. This game also is two player couch.

Co op, split screen, split vertically. And you can play as the prince or as one of his cousins, which you come across in the game.

Yes.

I think in the second one, too, once you find a cousin, you can play as them in the main story mode, too.

Oh, interesting.

Okay. Yeah. All right.

Swaperooni.

Not bad.

So the main mode is make a star mode. That's where you're doing your missions. There's rules to some of these, like, oh, collect the largest cow, collect the largest bear. Those ones I just try to breeze through. I'm not fucking spending too much time on that. And again, there's ones where if you collect the wrong thing, you end immediately.

It's immediately. There's no warning. It's like, boom, that's it, you fucked up.

Yeah. And you can do a score attack. But there's also some levels have an eternal mode where you can just.

Keep rolling. There's no time limit. Just make the biggest catamari you can.

Yeah, you're like fucking limp biscuit. Keep rolling, rolling. Roll in.

Yeah.

And like I said, near the end, you're, like, picking up continents and stuff, but in the beginning, you are super small and you're picking up, like, thimbles. And there are rats scurrying around that can knock you sideways. And there's, like, momentum to your movement, too, so you can slide off an edge if you're not stopping properly.

Yeah.

It's funny you said at the very beginning it's hard to describe the gameplay of this.

I still feel like we're not really.

Even doing a good job because it is this simple, but it's not as we're describing. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's tough to really put it in the words. What makes it different than just moving a ball around?

Yeah. We're trying our best to describe this, but this is ultimately a game that, if you want to have a good understanding of it, you kind of got to experience. Right.

Like, watching a YouTube or whatever. Play through is not the a lot of games it is. This is not the experience of playing the game at all.

Yeah, there's a certain status. It's satisfying. There's something satisfying about it that you can't really get from just watching something on it.

Not at all.

Not at all.

This game also, this game is not meant to be like a graphics powerhouse. No, it's cartoony, but it looks gorgeous. That's all I can say. It looks gorgeous. The way you know what it kind of reminded me of?

It looked gorgeous.

Kind of the way Sonic Adventure when it first came out. People shit on Sonic Adventure all they want, but when Sonic Adventure first came out, that shit looked incredible.

Yes, of course.

That first dreamcast commercial for Sonic Adventure was wild.

Yeah, it was incredible to see. Like, oh, that's where we're at now.

Yeah.

And that's the kind of the vibe I get from this game.

It's got a style to its graphics that it completely leans into and goes for the whole way. I can't say no other game looks like this, but you can tell they took care and time and effort to make this game look the way it looks.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

A lot was put into the look of this game.

It has some animal crossing vibes, too, I think.

Yeah, sure. Visually. Yeah.

But I think one of the best.

Things about this game is that is the music. Music is fantastic.

The soundtrack on this thing is fucking wild.

It's a banger.

I mean, it is hard to think.

Oh god, trying it's up there.

It's like a top ten for sure. Video game soundtracks of all time.

Okay, so categorizing it as it has to be originals. We can't talk about like Grand Theft Auto, that doesn't yeah, right.

Halo, maybe Halo, because that's all original.

Score is better than Halo.

Really?

Yeah, I think this music is better than Halo.

I have always said Halo is gold standard to me because there are so many cues and themes that I think.

Super Mario Brothers is standard.

Okay.

Yeah.

Everyone know. I think Zelda's up there too.

Even punch out.

Street Fighter Guiles theme.

Yeah.

Like I said, I think this is very easily top ten with all of these, though.

I'm not sure it's definitely in the conversation. It's not like out of the bounds of like if you really sat down and kept going on all of those all the ones we just mentioned.

Yeah.

It belongs in that conversation. I'm not sure it's not above some of the ones we mentioned.

Yeah.

I think it's probably better than Street Fighter. I think Street Fighters just burned into a lot of people's heads.

Yeah.

Because the amount of we've definitely my head.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

I used to play Street Fighter Two in a cabinet at a laundry map.

Of course. That's how you do it. You find one in some place where you're like, oh, they have that here. And then it's a place you go to a lot and you're like, I'm going to keep playing fucking Street Fighter.

Absolutely. Playing Metal Gear and Street Fighter.

Fuck yeah.

Or not. Metal Gear.

Metal Slug.

Metal Slug.

Fuck.

Come on.

Yeah, come on. Bubble Bobble. Sure.

Hell yeah. I would say that even if this game is not your fancy, if you enjoy video game music in general or Japanese pop kind of stuff, you can like the soundtrack and not like the game.

True. Yeah, it's that good.

It's on Spotify and it isn't earworms. Earworm like you fucking loop to not be able to stop.

Maybe not as big of an earworm as the biggest earworm of all time. And I'm not going to argue because I'm right. Do it do it theme to Ducktails.

I solve a mystery or rewrite history. Duckshell every day that I am making Ducktails.

Everyone knows that. Like, if you've ever heard that, you.

Know that Duck Berg might solve, you know, come on. Now. Should we do a Ducktails podcast next?

We should definitely do a Duck rewatch of every watch, every review, every episode of Ducktails. Let us know on Instagram if you want us to review every single episode of the version of Ducktails.

And we could put kind of an anti billionaire spin because of Scrooge McDuck.

That's true. We're also open to Dark wing duck.

Yeah, we could do that. Launch pad. Mcquax little spin off.

Yeah.

A lot of spin offs from Ducktails.

We can honestly, I think the entire Duckburg cinematic universe, I think we could.

We could do a whole thing.

We could go do a whole thing.

A couple hundred episodes, get sponsorship. It would be a whole thing yeah.

Of the Donald Duck universe.

Cinematic universe.

Why are we getting those reboots?

Yeah.

Bring that shit back.

Yeah. Where's my gritty, dark Knight style dark Wing duck? But I want a Dark Wing Duck where he, like, beats a Fentanyl dealer to death.

Perfect. He's on trial, maybe.

Yeah. Like the Donald Duck voice.

Like vengeance.

Okay, now you're talking. Yeah, I'm into that.

That was a terrible Duck impersonation. I'm over.

I don't care.

You don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, I don't care about any of that.

But back to Katamari damas.

Sure. I think we kind of have a.

Good idea of what the critics thought about this game.

Yeah.

But let's just confirm ferment has wildly high scores for a game that seems, on its face, so simple and doesn't have a ton of game to it. But on Metacritic, it has an 86 out of 100, and it's actually lower than I expected. Yeah. Well, you know, a bunch of, like.

Fucking dickhead Call of Duty guys were.

Like, what the hell the hell's this shit?

Where's the famous gun?

Why can't I have an I'm not shooting nothing.

I want to drop grenades. I want to cook my grenades.

Gorsch. Yeah. This is when Halo had, like, ruined a bunch of preteens brains, and by the time 2004 came around, they were.

All just cod players. Yeah.

They're not good people.

Yeah. Bad people.

Very bad people.

Just bad, bad fucking people.

But it was cheaper.

This is something I didn't realize until doing the research. It came out at, like, a $30 price point.

That's super smart.

Yeah. Which is great. Yeah.

Fantastic.

Yeah. And it sold 155,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2004 and eventually would sell half a million in Japan.

Not bad.

Good numbers. Not rookie numbers.

And it also wasn't released in pal territories europe and Australia. They thought it was too quirky for these markets, which is funny. I refuse to believe that this game is too quirky for australia who fucking call, like McDonald's maccas and all the fucking stupid words they say. Footy. Football is footy. Footy, yeah. Here's some Australian phrases for you, arvo that's afternoon.

I don't follow. I mean, I agree. I admit that that probably is true, but I don't see the connection.

There.

AVO.

Afternoon.

Avocado.

Wait, Arvo and Arvo are two.

AVO is avocado.

AVO.

Arvo. A-R-V-O is afternoon.

Yeah. I hate it.

They call swimsuit bathers.

Come on, it's like baby talk.

A liquor store is called a Bottle.

O. I kind of like that.

Yeah. The fuck out of here. Breakfast brecky.

I've heard Breckie.

I'm going to go back to Bottle O.

It's bad.

But in Massachusetts, the liquor stores are called Pakis.

Pakis.

That's like a slur in UK, right? That's what they call Pakistani people.

No, this is Pakistan.

Anyone vaguely Muslim?

Because it's based on package store liquor store packages. You got to get a package. It sounds like fucking mobster talk.

Midwest is the East Coast. East coast is the Australia of America.

Go on.

Buggered exhausted. That's fine, I guess. That's fine. Siggy.

Cigarette? Yeah, I can guess these.

Let's keep going to guess.

Chalky bicky.

Shocky bicky.

Yeah, shocky bicky.

Lighter. Cigarette lighter.

Chocolate biscuit.

Get the fuck shocky bicky. Okay, I get it.

I again get it. Stupid.

Crack the shits is a phrase for.

Getting angry at someone. Crack the shits.

Croikey.

Crikey is like an exclamation. Just oh, boy.

Devo devil devastated.

Can you imagine being out of they.

Just drop half the word and say.

Oh, could you imagine being at a funeral and be like, oh, me dad died.

That's probably British, isn't it?

Moy daddo passed away. I'm devo about it.

I'm devo. Some comedian said his imitation keyword for Australian accent is saying LaserDisc get there. He could get there every time if he just said that word. So he's like, oh, shit, I lost.

Yes.

LaserDisc.

Fair dinkham. Fair dinkham is it means yeah, honestly.

Yeah. Okay, I remember that from yeah, okay.

Yeah, that one. But again but again, katamari Domase was too quirky for Australia for a fair dinkham.

Okay, so what did the individual motherfuckers.

Think about this game?

Well, one up gave this motherfucker an A. Yeah.

Edge, famous gaming publication.

Edge. Edge. Eight out of ten. Okay. Eurogamer. Nine out of ten. Wow. Famitsu.

31 out of 40.

Why out of 40? Go.

I don't know. I'm not game Informer, eight out of ten.

Okay.

Game Pro, four out of five stars.

Okay.

Game revolution. A minus.

Game Revolution.

Game Spot, 8.7 out of ten.

8.7. Wow.

These are high scores.

Both Game Spy and official PlayStation Magazine Four and a Half Stars.

Bam.

Game Zone and I GN, nine out of ten. It won awards. It did the whole damn thing.

Let's hear them.

So it won the US Award for Excellence in Game Design at the 2005.

Game Developers Choice Awards.

That sounds like the Nerdiest fucking Ballroom. You can imagine.

Not as bad as the G Four award it won, which was best innovation at the G Four Awards.

Oh, God. Yeah.

But they had those women that they hired because they were hot, even though they didn't know about a game.

So they were probably alison Hayslip wasn't.

What'S her name from fucking movies.

Oh, yeah. Olivia Munn.

Yeah.

She was on shit about video games. She just show up to those things dressed like Princess Leia and dudes just salivate over that. You got to have a fucking career out of it.

It won two awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, one for outstanding innovation in console gaming and outstanding achievement in game design. And it got nominated for Game of the Year, console Game of the Year. And astounding out achievement in original music composition, which it should have won.

I think I was going to say music.

The fact that you didn't say it won any music awards is shocking.

Yeah. Let's see exactly who was nominated for that bullshit.

And I would like to know who beat them for Game of the Year, too.

Fable One.

Fable won for outstanding achievement in original.

Music composition that year. Okay.

The other nominees were Killzone NBA Ballers and Rome.

Total, total war.

Those are all very good games.

Now, for console Game of the Year.

I can't blame it. The winner was Halo Two.

Yeah, Halo Two is a masterpiece.

The other nominated games oh, this was a tough fucking year. The other nominated games were Burnout Three, GTA, San Andreas, Fuck, and Ratchet, and Clank Up Your Arsenal.

So that's what happened to this game. It just got clustered with classics. Just classics. The fact that it was on the list though, I think kind of proves.

Everything that was for console Game of the Year. Catamari was also nominated for Game of the Year, which also went to Half Life, too.

Yeah, of course not. Also that went to Half Went to.

Half Life, which again, super classic.

Even more difficult. Right, an even more difficult category because the other nominated games for Game of the Year were still GTA, San Andreas and Halo Two, but also World of fucking Warcraft.

Oh my God. Yeah, this is bad luck.

It won for outstanding achievement in game design.

Okay.

And it defeated City of Heroes fable San Andreas and half life.

Two beat them.

I think it should. Yeah, I think it should. I think it it definitely should win that.

Yeah, it was.

And it also won innovation in console gaming, which it was up against.

Donkey Konga was very funny. IToY antigrav fable and halo two.

Nice.

Oh, fad dankham, fad dankham. But what would you rate this game?

This game, I had heard it and I think as I said earlier, I.

Think I had played it, but I.

Didn'T get it then. Maybe because this game was a revelation. This game is incredible.

I'm going to give Katamari Damase eight.

And a half out of ten rolled up cows.

It's amazing.

It's a fantastic game. And I think we may have just sort of uncovered why it's not on these lists of I mean, it's on a lot of people's must play list, but it's not super, super well known.

And it should be.

It's an incredible game. It's fun. It's deeper than it appears. I say it a lot about games, but it's moments to learn, forever to master.

It's awesome. It's an awesome game and I love it. I can agree with pretty much all of that, which is why I'm going.

To give it nine out of ten.

Emotionally abusive, alcoholic fathers.

But this is definitely, like, this game is so good.

When we get to top tens, this game is going to have to be in a lot of conversations for me.

Absolutely. Like I said earlier.

There'S a fair.

Amount of obstacles in playing the original version of this game, but of course, Reroll is inexpensive, readily available on switch.

And I think really worth a pickup. Yeah, absolutely.

It fixes a couple of things that were a little clunky because of PlayStation Two technology, but it is every great thing about the game just a little.

Bit updated and handheld. Right.

Which is great, which this game is.

Begging to be handheld.

All right, well, thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to, like, subscribe and do all the things to make sure you do not miss an episode of our lovely podcast.

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