Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 205: Katamari Damacy

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey roll up Benj Edwards and Ben Elgin into an ever-growing ball of garba—errr, that is, an ever-growing podcast retrospective about Namco's delightful trash-gathering simulation Katamari Damacy.

Hey everyone, it's me, Jeremy Parrish, co-host of Retronauts. You may have noticed that we've moved back to Libson after being on podcast one for a couple of years, which means you can listen to Retronauts on platforms like Google Play again, and you won't hear any more creepy geotargeted ads. Now that we're setting up at our new home, our new hosts would like to get to know our audience a little better. If you're a fan of Retronauts, we'd be truly grateful if you could take a few minutes out of your day and complete a quick survey for us. Please head over to Survey.Libson.com slash Retronauts

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This week in Retronauts, my, the Earth really is full of things. Hi, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a bonus episode of Retronuts. Jeremy Parrish. And we're doing something different this week. We're changing all the rules, breaking the law. We are having a crossover Retronauts East-West episode. And here on Skype with the Retronauts East folks, we have none other than... Hello, everybody. It's huge ball of

garbage, Bob Becky. How's it going? That's fantastic. Yeah, Bob is calling in from the West Coast, while those of us on the East Coast are very cold and huddled together in a room for survival and snuggled up to me here in the studio we have Ben Jedgwick and also Ben Elton and we are going to talk this week about a game that is near and dear to all of our hearts Katamari Damasi and it's that's right there's going to be a lot of people just scatting and humming throughout this episode I've like any time the topic comes up these guys just start singing so pretty much so just kind of brace yourself for that, but don't worry, I'll be splicing in lots of music because you can't talk

about Katamari without talking about the soundtrack. But yeah, this topic is suddenly relevant again, thanks to the fact that Bandai Namco said, you know what? We have this amazing series called Katamari Domesi, and we should reissue it on Steam and Switch. And the Switch port, I've been playing it a lot. And I love it. It's just such a perfect fit. And they didn't really do anything to change the game. from the one that appeared 15 freaking years ago, if you can believe it's been that long. And it's still just an amazing, wonderful, little heartfelt experience. And so we've talked about doing a Katamari episode for ages.

And everyone in this room is like, yes, we need to do it. So here we are. We're doing it. Yep. So, yeah, actually, I'd love to hear from you guys how you first discovered the Katamari series. And Bob, why don't we start with you? I think it might have been, your coverage on OneUp that got me into it.

Were you previewing it or something like that at the time? Oh, boy, we'll talk about that. Okay. That's probably, I mean, I was a hardcore weeb, and I still am, and I wasn't to anything that was super Japanese and that had like a fun and weird concept. And I was definitely attracted to it from the beginning. And it helped that Namco released it at like, I think, $30 instead of $50, which was the common price for games in 2003.

It was like 60, 60, 70 was kind of the standard going price fairly early in the PS2. Yeah, it was a nice budget release. Not in Dirt World, Ohio. It was still $50. But I have to say, yeah, I mean, the weirdness of the concept, plus, you know, the cool graphics and the price and everything really got me into it. And I was a huge fan of it from the very beginning. I think I pre-ordered it. And I just confused everybody at the store that I pre-ordered it at because they're like, oh, somebody wants this.

And my only regret about the new collection you mentioned is the fact that they don't include the second game, which is the better game. And in my opinion, there are only two Kadamari games. That's where I stand. I did kind of have the same opinion that I was like, you know, I'm really glad that this was being re-released, but I kind of wish they had done the second one, you know, either in addition or instead, just because, you know, there's some refinements in there that are nice. But, but yeah, it's great to have it in any form. So, Ben, how did you first stumble across Katabari? I think this may have actually been the same thing. I mean, I was definitely reading, reading you guys back then, too.

I was really hoping to have more interesting approach vectors than me, but okay. It's all you, Jeremy. But, and this was, and this is, this was really in a period in the PlayStation's history where we're like, one of the big appeals of the platform is that we were starting to get more and more of these, like, weird little releases from, releases from Japan that were, you know, not in some established genre that were just trying weird things. And that really appealed to me a lot. And again, you know, this coming out of the budget price made it really easy to just jump in and try it. And it was just fantastic. I do acknowledge a few more releases in the series than Bob does, although, although they did start to draw up pretty. and we'll get into that later.

But yeah, it was just, it was just a great time from day one. Yeah, so I was a huge EGM reader from like 92 to the end of its first run, the classic EGM. And I probably, it's been 10 years, 10 years ago. Yeah, that's crazy. I can't believe it. But, yeah, I probably heard of it through EGM, and it may have been Jeremy writing about it for all I know, but I don't remember that specifically. you know, whoever, you know, whoever I was not the only person writing about it. It took a little while for, I would say, other people in the U.S. press to catch on to it,

but I'm not taking credit for having discovered it or anything. I was sort of introduced to it by someone I worked with and just immediately fell in love. Well, this is the funny thing about Jeremy's coverage at that time was that I, you know, I identified with you and your quirky sort of tastes and sensibilities. And obviously that's, we've discovered we have a lot in common in terms of things like Symphony of the Night and things like, you know, I remember you're talking about Odensphere really cool. It made me want to buy Odin's sphere. And so, yeah, it was probably Jeremy. I have no idea. But I, the first time I ever played it was from, is that, is that part of the question? Because, you know, like just how did you discover it, you know, and, you know, we can also talk about what made us fall in love with the game. Yeah, well, the cool thing about it is that I didn't have a PS2 until probably 2004. even though it came out in 2000 something like that and my brother gave it to me for my birthday because I couldn't afford it at the time

and the first game I got for it was Katamari Damasi because I wanted to play it so bad so that was and I sat there I just sat down and played it all the way through until like the first sitting till the end and that's that's really interesting because I don't think anyone would have looked at Katamari Damasi in 2004 and said

oh yes this is a system seller but it literally was a system seller for you yeah it was because I'm weird man I mean that's but But, yeah, like Ben said, that gets to kind of what made the PS2 so powerful is that, you know, publishers were really able to take a risk at that point. Game development hadn't ballooned in cost like it did with HD graphics a few years later. And the production of DVD ROMs and CDROMs was so cheap that they could afford to, you know, take risks on little odd things like this. And the reach of the PS2 itself was so extensive.

and it just like everyone owned one, whether they wanted a game system or a DVD player, there was like no downside to putting stuff on PS2. Like enough people would buy something like this that you could make back your cost of localization or whatever. So yeah, I feel like it was really kind of in the vanguard of this sort of, this really, really fertile era of creativity and localization on PS2.

And Japanese publishers or American publishers really kind of around this time had been making a real effort to bring over more games. And Katamari was kind of, I think, emblematic of that. And, you know, I honestly didn't expect the game to come over. And I was sort of newly introduced into the gaming press at that point. I had just started working at Oneup.com like a year before that. And I feel like I was kind of an ass and had a lot of like a chip on my shoulder and was, like, looking back, I'm like, I needed to kind of tone it down a little bit. But I just felt like, you know, I really love classic games and

smaller, quirkier games. And that kind of thing didn't get a lot of coverage in the mainstream American press at the time. And there wasn't really much of a network of, you know, smaller sites and smaller publications to support it. Social media didn't exist. So it was hard to get word of mouth out. So I feel like maybe I pushed a little too hard and was a little bit strident about saying, like, hey, people need to pay attention to this stuff. But I also kind of felt like, if I don't do it, you know, what other coverage is this stuff going to get? So Katamari was one of those games that I was introduced to by a coworker, Kevin Gifford, who ran TSR's NES homepage back in the day and does localization work now. And he kind of mentioned out on his personal blog. And I was just like, this game looks incredible.

It's, it's like everything that I love about video games. It's simple and it has a unique graphical style and the music is amazing and it just has a fun personality. I love this and I really went to bat for it and actually got in trouble at work for it. Our publisher kind of like called me on the carpet and said, you need to like not write about stuff like this so much on your one-up blog, but maybe write about things that people actually care about. Yeah, it, you know, and then jokes on them. Yeah, and then at E3 like a month later, sorry. Right, at E3, 2004. Namco actually showed this game off and I was like

and it was kind of as a test they were like trying to gauge interest and say like should we bring this game over which that never happened like who took a game to E3 just to see if people like to dangle it in front of people I had never heard of that happening but people like flocked to it

they loved it they were kind of like what is this intriguing thing and they tried it and they played it and you know pretty much everyone fell in love with it I think it I was going to say I think it still helped that we were I think it still helped that we were in sort of the tail end of the quote unquote wacky Japan era of marketing in which that could be a hook for people like look at this wacky Japanese thing and that could be a draw which is why they never changed the name when they brought it out over here like that was genuinely surprising that they didn't call it something else.

La la la la la la la la la I was brought it over but I was very happy. And I was surprised that they didn't try to like they didn't fundamentally change it. They didn't try to make it extreme. They didn't give the prince angry eyebrows. They didn't call it like big balls or something. Yeah. There's so many ways they could have just screwed this up. It is a game about- Oh, big are your balls? Get the biggest balls in the galaxy. Like, they could have gone low as common denominator, but they didn't. They were just like, here's this unusual game from Japan.

They leaned into how Japanese it was because fundamentally they couldn't make the game not take place in Japan and be very Japanese. It would take too much money and work. So they just really had to lean into how Japanese the game is, I think. That's a fascinating point, Bob. Actually, I never thought about that because they couldn't afford to redo the whole game. Yeah, like that's all Japanese objects and houses and stuff. Yeah, like probably 25% of the objects in there are pretty specific to, yeah. Yeah, I mean, most stages you either start out in a Japanese home or a Japanese town.

And there's no question about it. Like, those are not hamburgers. Those are Onigiri. Yeah, you start out on a kotatsu. No one's going to buy it if you say otherwise. Yeah. Well, this was the first game I ever played that was that I had bought that was really fully unabashedly Japanese. And, you know, it wasn't local.

like you're saying it wasn't changed much as far as I know and it was in the I mean the whole freaking soundtrack is in Japanese of course too which is another thing well sort of there's a lot of English yeah but yeah but you know what I mean it's done by Japanese artists and there's plenty of Japanese they didn't make a whole new soundtrack for American like with like blink 182 or something it's no sonic CD that's for sure yeah so yeah I mean it was here here this is Japanese and we're not embarrassed about it, and it's awesome. And so I loved that about that game. It's just an expression of joy all the way through to me.

Yeah, the packaging and the marketing kind of, I think, not rode the coattails, but they sort of caught the spirit of something that had kind of become a little bit of a motif or a theme in the classic gaming blogosphere that existed at the time, the idea of blue sky gaming, which is very associated with Sega. But the, oh, no, I totally forgot what they're called. I can't remember the name of the website, but there was a blog that was like super into Sega, and they always talked about, like, blue sky gaming and about how, you know, games like Outrun had this sort of bright, optimistic feel that you just don't get in video games anymore.

And if you look at the package to Katamari Damasi, it absolutely does. Like, it is, you know, like a blue sky and a rainbow and very, like, kind of abstract, colorful graphics. That cover is awesome, too. It's so good, yeah. They just embraced the nature of the game. And, you know, we've been saying, like, oh, this is a very Japanese game. It is. But I think, you know, even among games from Japan, it's unusual.

And that's because it was designed by someone who is not really by trade of video game creator. The creator of Kadamari Damasi, who directed the first two games, as an artist named Keta Takahashi, who actually, I think, lives in the Bay Area. now he does yeah yeah and uh he has like a very international outlook and a very like like almost kind of like a hippie outlook he's very much into the idea of um community and peace and he hates the idea of seeing like his work turned violent and that sort of thing yeah he does things like designing playgrounds you know playground equipment and and like community installations and that kind of stuff yeah and the games he's created since katamari are only kind of of games they're they're more like toys or amusements or interesting um abstractions and

experiments uh you know like nob noby boy uh that was the one that like he was trying to get to the edge of the solar system right well the girl girl was girl is yeah stretch boy it added to girl yeah so it was like it took yeah it took it took the collective efforts of everyone who played the game and pooled them together into like this this uh like system wide achievement that that that they were trying to reach. And eventually they did. And the gameplay itself was barely, like there was barely game there. It really was more of a playground.

Like here's the equipment, here's some objects, just do stuff, play on it, you know, make your own emergent, whatever. Yeah, that's just the kind of designer he is. He's just like, you know, here's some fun stuff. His philosophy makes sense if you look at Katamari, the first game, because the least fun levels are the ones that require the most skill and are the most game-like, like the ones where it's like, find the biggest cow. And if you touch anything that's not, you know, a huge cow, the level's over.

it's a cow those levels are terrible and I'm glad they didn't do that in the second game they're just not fun at all well there are other gimmicky levels and some of them work better than others yeah I spent you spent 30 minutes

trying to build up as big as you can to get the biggest bowl and then you touch the tiny cow and you screws it all or you touch like a carton of milk or something like that and it counts it's like the game tricking here but I don't want to point out that

this will date this episode hugely but I want to point out that we're living in the era of Marie Kondo and Conmer the cleaning up your crap technique and this game is very much about recognizing the clutter of the world just how the world is full of objects

and they're like in every corner and you don't think about it until you were very small and rolling around and just seeing everything all the junk and garbage everywhere and every home they should make a Konmari Damasi game Oh my God that's perfect

Wow How did I don't think of that fun I definitely started It definitely started looking at that When I was really into the game When I was first playing I get the thing like you know They talk about like

The Tetris effect Have you been playing too much Tetris, you start thinking about how real world things would fit together. And I totally had that with Katamari when I was first playing it, where I would look at my desk and say, okay, if I were this size, first I would roll up all those little things over there and then the paper clips, okay, and then the pencils and then that stuff. And yeah, and just, there really are a lot of things in my room. Last night, my family had just like a, you know, a dinner together where all my cousin-in-laws

and their kids and so forth came over. and my youngest niece who's like 18 months old found this little toy that had gone missing, I don't know, like two years ago. I was like, I'd totally forgotten it existed. And all of a sudden she was walking around with it because I guess she was the only one who was small enough and at the right level to find where it had fallen behind a cabinet or whatever. I was like, well, that's bad for you. You can't put that in your mouth.

You choke to death on Golgo 13 and that's bad. But like, yeah, it really kind of, it does sort of, kind of tie in to the idea that in this game you are a very small person looking at the world and from starting out at least from a very kind of ground-eye perspective and it changes the nature of everything that's around you. So why do we actually what Katamari Damasi is? We've talked about how it's wonderful for 20 minutes. But I guess we should actually like say, how do you play this game?

First of all, let's say that the title, Katamari Damasi is, of course, Japanese. And it essentially means like cluster of souls. Damasi is like a kind of stylish hip way of saying tamashi, which means soul. And so the the name when it's written in Japanese is like two very complicated kanji characters that look very similar. So there's a lot of like layers of meaning happening there that don't necessarily come through in English. But that's okay because it doesn't need to. You know, no one's going to say like kind of. Kind of. Mara Damasi, you mean that other game? It kind of communicates for itself, I think, in a way that works. But the name does kind of speak to the design of the game. I've been talking a lot, so I'll let someone else describe the game. All right, we want to just talk about how it works. So you are the prince, this little character pushing around the Katamari, which is this clump that stuff sticks to, and you're trying to roll up stuff and make your clump bigger. Anytime you roll up something that's sufficiently smaller than your current clump, it sticks and it makes the clump bigger.

And you're trying to get to a certain, most levels, at least in the original game, you're trying to get to a certain size in a certain amount of time, although there's various other criteria sometimes. But to do this, you've got, this is an interesting thing about the game, is you've basically got tank control. So you're using your dual analog sticks forward and back on the left and the right so you can swivel and forward and back. And honestly, I'm pretty sure this is the first game with tank controls that I actually enjoyed since like tank. like the Atari game, like the vector game, you know, I can't think of, or battle zone, yeah, battle zone and tank. Like, I can't think of anything else in between that actually employed tank controls that I didn't hate. It feels very natural. It feels very natural when you're rolling

this thing, yeah, in a way that it doesn't if you were just trying to control a character or, or, you know, some kind of fast vehicle or something. Yeah, I haven't played a game that has controls like this in a long time, but when I went back to Katamari re-roll, I found it was like super natural. I just fell right back into it. And actually, I've been playing it way more effectively and getting much better results than I did back when I played it on PS2. It's a funny point is I always assume these controls were very natural. And I was talking about how cool re-roll is on Twitter. And one or two people replied and said, I downloaded the demo. I didn't know how the hell to play this game. It was really unintuitive. And I couldn't figure it out. Yeah. So like, I don't know.

Maybe it's not intuitive to other people start with the control tutorial. With those kind of tank controls, you know, if you start out trying to control it with one of the sticks, you're not going to get the results you expect. It's not as great, like, with the switch sticks because they're not right there. But this brings another point, which is the prototype for Katamari Damasi was developed on the GameCube. Oh, that sounds awful. They actually would have used. Yeah. Can you imagine playing that with one of the C stick?

And the other thing at the same time is like, man. I can see people today being confused by the controls because I feel like in 2003, you're a used. to like with every new game it's time to learn how this game controls uniquely but now everything is much more standardized so i feel like it's harder to adapt yeah you've played assassin's creed and you've played call of duty so you know how every game yeah you're used to having one stick direction and the other stick camera which is not what it is at all and r2 always shoots yeah yeah you're right and yeah they they did that for racing games too you always know what's accelerate and what's break and stuff but the fine thing is uh for the switch the switch pro controller is more like like an

Xbox controller, but the Wii U pro controller would have been perfect because it has two analog sticks at the same level of high. That would have been the perfect category. Can you not use the Wii U pro controller with the switch? I don't know. I don't think so. I've been using the Switch Pro controller. I think it works the best out of the two ways I've tried to control it.

I need an adapter, I think, to use it. I only ever use my switch as a handheld system. And I think I don't feel like the lateral displacement of the sticks has any impact whatsoever on how I play. It's totally comfortable and fine. I mean, I'm not going to tell people they're wrong if it affects them because, okay, I get it like everyone's brain is wired differently and response to controls differently. But like for me, it just feels totally natural going back into it. And I was really gratified. I was, I was kind of worried about that. Like, will I be able to play this game still? And yes, absolutely. I'm like racking up amazing scores on

my first time through stages. And I'm like, wow, I can't believe I'm this good at this game. I didn't used to be this good. I guess I just needed like a 10-year hiatus. Yeah, or 10 years of games in the interim to practice on it. Right. I've severed through a bunch of NES and Super NES games now. So if I can deal with ghosting goblins, I can deal with this. Yeah, I played through these a lot back in the day.

So I basically 100-percented Catamari and we love Katamari and it's Katamari forever, like collected every single object in all of them. So, yeah, I got pretty good at them after playing it that much. So we should talk about the story to the games because it is kind of like tied into the gameplay. Like there is a reason you're rolling this sticky ball around. And that is because your dad is a jerk. Pretty much.

Yep. And so this, there's like this undercurrent of parental alienation running through these games that would be really sad and maybe a little like depressing if the games weren't so lighthearted. fun but but the game begins with the king of all cosmos who is this how would you describe what he even looks like he's a he's a strange looking fellow he's fabulous like like like a singlet or something yeah go fop but like all the royal family has this weird thing around their heads i don't know what it is it's like a tube that their head is like in the center of it's it's

really hard to describe but anyway he gets drunk and in his uh his glorious Bender, he breaks all the stars in the sky. So then he's like, well, kid, his son, he's like, you got to, you got to clean up your old dad's mess. I'll be watching you and judging you from afar. So then your job is to just roll up crap on Earth and send it into space and turn that stuff into stars. Like cosmologically, it doesn't make any sense, but it's a fun premise. And it gives you an excuse to roll around. You feel the cosmos. You do feel the cosmos. And in the second game, you learn about his tortured past. And I guess how he became an alcoholic. Oh, I don't remember that part.

It's been a long time since I played with the flashbacks. You learned about how the cycle of abuses passed down through generations. That's crazy. Well, you know, the first time I played the first Katamari game, I don't know how well I picked up on that vibe of the dad and son dynamic, but when I played again on the re-roll and now I'm a father, I really picked up on it. I was like, wow, there is some sort of some kind of hidden pathos here

that he's, you know, not hidden, but it's a subtext of this parental discord between the father and child going on. Yeah, he's not a good dad. Yeah. He's very, like, dismissive and abusive, not in a physically abusive kind of way, just... Emotionally. Yeah. Yeah, like, he's kind of crappy to his son.

Neglectful, neglect. He acts like he's being very benevolent to you, but he's just an entitled jerk. Pretty much, yeah. So your job is basically to clean up your dad's mess, and as you play through the the game, you roll your ball around and stuff sticks to it. And the more stuff that sticks to it, the larger it becomes, the larger it becomes the bigger the objects you can pick up. So it's this very satisfying loop of gameplay where you're constantly growing the scale of the object you're pushing around and you can pick up more and more stuff. And it sounds really simplistic

and, you know, almost to the point of ridiculousness. But it's so in, it's so, it's so addictive like just the prospect of another prospect the process of of becoming larger and crossing over these barriers like some levels have you know little signs that say like you must be five meters to pass through here so when you pass through there and you start picking up things that you couldn't be for it's very satisfying when when you know when things are much larger than you they'll walk around heedless of you like they don't really kick you around yeah they don't care that you're there they just bump into you and you go flying and stuff falls off your katamari but then later you get bigger and you can pick them up and add them to your

ball i feel like it's a yeah that's like a vengeance yeah it's like a a narrative that it's not what's the word it's a like a parable for control and gaining control over your life like you're kicked around as a little kid everybody kicks you around and then it's so satisfying to grow bigger and then be able to kick and just absorb all those people who are kicking you around and then you get to destroy the whole world essentially by absorbing it eventually you know the the houses, buildings, and everything. There's very few games that, like, play with the sense of scale to this extent. So, like, you know, in the very beginning, you're getting pushed around by mice.

And then even at the first level, you can get big enough that you can roll them up. And you're like, okay, that's how this works. You know, we get bigger in the room and stuff. But it just keeps going. Yeah, at the end, you're literally rolling up the continents. Yeah, there's the first time you roll the person. And then there's the first time you roll up a house and then you're, like, rolling around cities. Yeah.

Well, there's one, I forgot to add about the father dynamic. There's also that story of the kids and the father. going to space so there's another father yeah yeah thing going on with that story which i don't remember the exact story but i think he's an astronaut yeah and the the girl is the one who feels the cosmos and then don't they say something like it's the flight's delayed because there's nowhere to go there's no moon like something like that doesn't that happen yeah yeah that was in the cutscenes in the first game like you have to you have to rebuild space before they can have a space program again yeah so so the the the family barely even factors into the game but a lot of the story is told through their eyes and

It's just like, you know, a nuclear family, a father, mother, two kids, a son and a daughter. And they're kind of outsiders and picking up some of the details about what's happening through the news. And then occasionally being like, oh, hey, that seems weird. Oh, there's something happening. And then occasionally the girl will be like, oh, the constellation has come back. I feel the cosmos. Yeah. And the first time I played that, that was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen in a video game.

The most bizarre sort of like tangential, strange, abstract thing. But today, you know, where nothing is a surprise anymore because we have the Internet and we've known and seen every sort of bizarre permutation of human behavior and culture, it seems so tame and nothing. Like I can't imagine a person coming to it today who's a younger generation ever feeling the same thing I felt when I played it because it was just such a new thing compared to the web. localized titles that we had, you know, they censored all that bizarre Japanese kind of stuff from us, and what was bizarre to us anyway. But this is the full force. You get it.

Plus, I still feel like it's kind of poignant that you've just got this sort of little tangential side story about these characters who are essentially just pieces in the game. You know, you end up rolling them up, you end up their house. But they've got, you know, their own life going on that's just sort of there in the little background cutscenes. I know what I'ma da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. I know you love me. I want to water up into my life. Let's roll up to be a single star in the sky I hear you calling me I'm sorry, I was going to talk about, just how it's going to talk about, I know, it's okay, I was going to talk about just how technically well-made this game is.

Like, like, creatively it's brilliant, but the technical aspect of it is. amazing. Everything is very low polygon and very low texture quality so they can fit a lot of things on the screen. But playing again, I noticed how effectively they cull out smaller items as you grow. They just remove them from the world and you don't really notice. Yeah, they use

those like your milestones where the King of All Cosmos comes and talks to you. They use that as kind of like a loading screen. Like, you'll hit a certain goal and there'll be that the screen kind of gets blurry. And then the King pops up and he talks to you. And I'm pretty sure that's

masking like a delode for certain objects and putting other things into memory. Definitely is. Well, and I think it's switching stuff between being background and being interactable when you do that. Yeah, so it's like, it's very efficient and very thoughtful. Yeah, like you didn't see a lot of that sort of thing happening. And it's especially smart because, you know, the, the, the disc speed on the PS2 was not the greatest. Right. Yeah, like so in later games on the HD systems, they didn't have to do that anymore because you could just dynamically load whatever you needed as you needed it. But yeah, back on PS2, you had to have some finesse to pull this kind of thing off.

And there's really no physics system in the game. They're proprietary programmed in physics, I guess, but it's amazing to think that there's no physics happening in the way that we think of them today. Yeah, it's not like havoc or something. It's just like you bump into something and pieces fly off and then they just kind of lay around. You can go pick them up.

But yeah, it's not like realistically modeled gravity and, you know, objects aren't reflecting each other. Yeah, there's no ragdolls, thank God. When you knock into a person, they go spinning, but they're like stiff. They're like bowling pins. It's just sort of rotating. They're like a game piece. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like the whole thing, yeah, the low poly look that you mentioned, Bob. That's a key to the design of the game. And even the cutscenes, which are hand drawn with the Hoshino family, like they look like everything in the game. They're still blocky. So it's just like a pervasive art style. But the king and the prints don't look like that. It's just everything on earth.

Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's like it's an aesthetic. choice and at the same time enables the technical feats they were doing with the game that it all ties together as this aesthetic but it also lets it actually run on this system with the amount of objects they were trying to deal with yeah and there aren't a whole lot of goals in the game it's like you play through levels and each level you're trying to get to a certain size and then you have some of the variant levels like find the biggest cow or whatever or get the most money was that I think that was in the second game or find all the fish for Pisces yeah so like that's that's

and all the crabs for cancer. Yeah. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. But, you know, like, you can always go back to a stage and try to find a bigger goal or, like, you know, achieve a bigger end score. Yeah. And then within each stage, there's stuff hidden. There's a present from your father.

Like, he forgot to give it to you and just left it on the world. So he kind of cares, but not enough to really bother. And also there are cousins, the princess cousins, are hidden within the world. And if you can roll them up, then you can play as them instead of as the prince. I think it may not have been... Was that only the second game? It was the second game when you could actually play as them. I think they were still there in the first game.

Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I was trying to play as them in the Switch remake. Yeah. Part of the reason I wish they would put out the second one, too, is because it just expanded a lot of these little things and they'll flesh them out a little more. I love playing as the cousins and dressing them up in different hats and stuff like that. Yeah, there's all, yeah, wearable stuff that you can collect. But then also in addition to like the explicit presence, there's also, so it's keeping track in one of the menus through all. all these games of all the different kinds of objects you've collected, right? And how many you've collected, right? What? And how many? Yeah. And so every single thing you collect. And if you get way too

into these games, you can start, you know, if you've exhausted the explicit collectibles, then you can start thinking about, okay, what objects are there in the world that we haven't got? And there'll be some that, you know, there's one of this object in one obscure place in one level that you have to go super fast to get to a big enough size to pick it up while it's still there. Wow. Are you speed running this game? I mean, you sort of, you sort of end up having to do that in order to get some of the things. Do you know, if you, if you're really good in the early things, can you get really big and still roll up bigger things that they don't really intend you to roll up?

Is it within the time limit? Is it possible? I mean, in the first game, if you get to a, if you try to remember what the requirement for it was, but I'm pretty sure, you know, if you, if you do really well, you can unlock unlimited time modes on some of the levels. that'll just let you relax and just roll stuff for as long as you want it. And at that point, you can pretty much just, you know, roll up everything that's rollable in the level, and you will hit boundaries at some point. Well, you mentioned the collection screen, and I implore everyone who has this game to go into that screen and read the description for every object because they're all written

from the perspective of an outside observer, and they're all very funny. And they will teach you things about different objects in Japan that you might not know about. I mean, they're written by the king, aren't they? I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he like doesn't really care that much about Earth. know that much about Earth? You get the impression that he's not like God in the sense that he didn't create everything. He's just like some cosmic entity who has the ability to destroy

stars. And he's like, okay, Prince, go just use the resources you find on this world to make new stars. Yeah. And he's just, yeah, he has this outsider perspective and he's just described. And sometimes he describes things completely wrong. He'll just assume that some function of something is, it's not what it is at all. So yeah, the descriptions are great. But this also, this collection aspect also enabled this whole kind of playground throwback community aspect to this game that I don't know if a lot of people got into but there's there's communities online that would people where people would be telling you know where they found these rare

objects and so I was uh Katamari on the web was a big one that I was on through like all the first several games um I think it just recently moved but it resurrected itself somewhere and you can still find it and so there'd be things like in one of the games um this is actually another very Japanese thing there was one of these like Japanese PE class like hurdle things that's made out of a bunch of stacked steps so that you can make it to whatever size you want

and so in a bunch of the levels there's one of these hurdles that's made out of like 10 steps so you roll over it when you're big and you get you know like step one through step 10 but it turns out there's actually like step 11 and step 12 in the game but they're not in the like play yard and like I think the 12th step in one of the games

is only found like you know 10 meters underwater in the ocean off the coast of some island in one of the stages and you know eventually someone finds it and posts it and then everyone's like oh we could finally get that part of our collection and so really obscure yeah and so there was this so it so there was this great kind of kind of community aspect to just trying to track down all these last few objects that that was a lot of fun if you're really spending a lot of time with the game and looking for things to keep doing oh that's great I wish I had had time to invest in it but you

know in the press it's always like even if you are obsessed a game over a game like I was with this you still have to move on to the next stuff yeah but but you know There is something to be said about the aesthetics of the game and just the way it looks. It's very unique and remarkable. And if you guys ever look at my refrigerator downstairs when you're recording here, you might have noticed I have little katamari magnets on my refrigerator that my sister made for me with shrinky dinks. Like she got so into this game that she was just like making crafty things about the katamari characters. So I have a bunch of katamari cousins, like miso and I don't even like the strawberry one, just a bunch of that she just made. made for me and there's also like a little shrinkety katamari. And I love that she's, you know,

crafty like that, but also that this game was just so captivating that it caught her attention like that. And that I got to be a beneficiary. La La La La La La Yeah, the esthetic Yeah, the aesthetic really resonating with people. You get people making up their own new cousins and stuff. You have your own Prince Sona or whatever.

The cousin thing is interesting. I got a different person. perspective of that with my six-year-old daughter, we had played the Xbox 360 Catamari, which I forgot the name of it. I think it's beautiful. Beautiful Catamari with the Xbox one. She had played that, and she could pick any cousin she wanted. And then so we went back to re-roll, and she really wanted to pick another cousin, like to be a

girl cousin or something, but we couldn't do it. Yeah, because that's the first game. Yeah, I think, yeah, the second one is the one where you can play as the cousins on any level. After you roll them up at a level then. So what we're saying is that they need to release We Love Katamari on Yes, they do. I hope this sold well.

I think it's done pretty well. I feel like it has. I feel like Bandai Namco waited too long and I always wondered why they didn't bring this out earlier in any form. I believe Katamari 1 was re-released on PS3 digitally,

but that was probably it. I think so. I mean, they had the download version of it that's just an emulation. Yeah. But I think it's weird to think of this as a product of Bandai Namco, but it was really a product of Namco

before they were subsumed and consumed by the corporate beast. The later games are very much the corporate beast style creations. Okay, so we've talked a lot about the first game, but before we, you know, touch on the sequels, we have to talk about the music because it's such an integral part of the Katamari experience. I mean, even if you don't like video games, it's, I don't know how you could listen to the soundtrack

and not just be like, this is wonderful music. It's so unique. It's like nothing else in any other video game. And, you know, Namco always had really great composers, especially around this era. But even this, you know, like even within Bandai or within Namco, like this soundtrack stands out. It's incredible. I burn it to a CD. Yeah.

And listen to it in my car. So everyone knew the world's coolest man was driving into town. But the interesting thing is I've heard that they were actually kind of like taken aback by how popular the soundtrack was. Because when they were putting this together, they were going. for kind of a nostalgic, eclectic feel. And so they just pulled in all these random artists that they found, you know, who had maybe, like, had a hit 10 or 20 years ago and could use some work or something. I don't know any of these artists.

Like, they mean nothing to me. I just know that they put amazing music in the game. This is my, this soundtrack was my first exposure to J-pop, any kind of anything like that, or Japanese popular music or Japanese classical popular music. So I'm pretty sure most of these people were someone who had, like, I mean, maybe not a number one hit, but at least had something that was popular. but it was mostly 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. And they just pulled these people into the studio and said, like, yeah, do something new and just let them go.

And like, so like I had written down here that like K Sarasara is by jazz singer Charlie Kosei who did a bunch of music for Lupin the 3rd back in the day, which I hadn't known at the time, but now that I think about it, that totally makes sense. Like that very much tracks, but it's that kind of music. And there's, yeah, there's just all this period's tough. There's like a mombo. There's some like kind of jazz room music. a rap kind of rap that's in the second game the second game yeah

but but yeah it's just it's just this eclectic bunch of stuff and it's just amazing I yeah the it was Yu Miyaki that's the musical yeah youmiaki is the super music he must be a genius did some of the composition

but then also just let some of these other artists do their own thing did some of the composition but he pulled this whole thing together so he's like this dude is a genius in my book I personally use the Catamari soundtrack is like my crunch music when I have a deadline when I'm about to, you know, I have to turn in something in an hour and I got to write a thousand words or something. So I put it on and it gets me going.

I had Katamari on the Rock as my ringtone for years and years and years. And the other thing about the soundtrack, a funny thing is I feel like the game would not be the same without the soundtrack. It's really great gameplay. what it's a really great soundtrack so on Twitter last year I posted a poll like what percentage of this what percentage of coolness is the

soundtrack versus the gameplay in Katamori and I think the result was 50% that sounds right and it feels good yeah like you can enjoy the game without the music and you can enjoy the music without the game but the two together it's like you know Star Wars and the Star Wars soundtrack

like neither would be fully complete without the other they're just they worked together so perfectly and like the I don't know what remember I I don't remember what the name of the very final stage track is but it just feels so like it takes all the the kind of motifs from throughout the game and just makes them feel grand and you know this is you know the one where you're rolling up contents and you see a little Ultraman rip off over there fighting and you roll them up and it's it's you know like it's it just feels grand I think uh Andrew Vestal formerly of the Gaming Intelligence Agency

described the final stage of Catamari Domesi as riding down a hill on a bicycle and letting go of the handles. It just has that sensation of speed and it just keeps going faster and faster and getting bigger and bigger. It's a rush.

It's definitely an exhilarating rush to get bigger and have the time to actually get big enough to roll up the buildings and all that. Yeah, they did that in both the first few guys. Like the first one, I think it was a variation of Catamari on the rock in the first one.

And the second one, the final stage was song for the King of Kings where the King of Cosmos actually starts doing vocals halfway. Yeah, that's right. Which is fantastic.

Yeah, but the, the soundtrack really runs the gamut. There's, you know, like the, we mentioned, what's it called? Kesarasaura, which is kind of like

a Burt Bacarok sort of loungey sort of thing. Lounge jazz kind of stuff. But then you have, um, I think, oh, yeah, you are smart. You are smart. Which is like almost kind of abstract and there's nothing really to it except just like this voice saying,

you are smart. Yeah. That's all there is to it. Stages where you're supposed to hit an exact size with a lot of MRAs. You have to like concentrate and figure out what you're doing. But then you have the lonely rolling star, which is like this wistible, beautiful song that doesn't seem like it should belong in a video game. And yet it's so perfect here. That's the one where all the kids.

Cherry Tree Times is the one with the kids chorus. Oh, the Cherry Tree Times. Yeah, that one makes me miss my children. So when I was working, like, if I got to that point, I would start thinking, oh, man, I got to finish this so I can go see my kids. So it kind of worked out. But the thing about the music is they had to design this music to be sufferable to repeated plays. Yeah, to loop the level. So they loop it.

Yeah, it gets really long time. Well, and it does, if you listen to the soundtrack, it's got everything. It basically, it does the regular version. And then it segues straight into a karaoke version where it plays all the backing tracks without the chorus, without the vocals and then segue's back. And so they get a lot of mileage out of each of these songs because, yeah, depending on the stage, you can be playing the same stage for like 10, 15 minutes, which is a long track.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Ksar, Sera, like, goes on for a long time before it loops. Yeah. And it's a soundtrack that holds up really well as an independent release, like as a separate release, like I said before, like Mondo Records released the soundtrack on vinyl last year. And it's just, like, it's, it is kind of the quintessential sort of music that you you want on vinyl. It's quirky and it's a little bit nostalgic and it's a little bit inventive and it just really takes advantage of the format and it's like kind of the quintessential like,

oh, I'm showing off my record player kind of music. And the fact that it comes from a video game, that's kind of a bonus. Yeah, and it really works way into your head. Like even if you're playing this long level and then it'll go from the vocal version into the karaoke version and I'll just totally involuntarily start singing the vocals to fill it in. Like you've just been listening to that up to that point and yeah it just makes it super memorable yeah if you if you ever have the chance to pick up that vinyl soundtrack even if you don't own a record player like i recommend it just because the packaging is so perfect they they went an extra step like each disc is a like a different color it's you know like these very spring like colors bright green lavender and then the uh the sleeves are

this sort of acetate that has uh like white artwork printed on it over top of of the records itself. It's just, yeah, like they put a lot of heart into the packaging on this. And it just is a perfect little package of amazing music that goes with a fantastic video game. And I'm really glad that Katamari had this very unexpected but very welcome resurgence in 2018. And I really hope that Namco is able to kind of pick it up and carry it and do something with it. I would love to see some more re-releases on current consoles. But I'd love to see them, you know, really take the idea and do something. something new and yet spiritually faithful with it for the future.

Like Catamari cart racing? Maybe not Cardamari, you know. But I feel like there's, there are, there's potential in the series to do something more. And I don't know, maybe they need to get Keita Takahashi back to give them some advice. I don't know. But I want to think there's like something more for Katamari. Yeah, I think so. I think so.

It's a, and just the last thing I have to say about this soundtrack is I consider it the greatest video game soundtrack of all time, maybe second to Super Mario Brothers. Really? We're going to say Symphony the Night. Yeah, well, that's great, too. But I feel like in terms of groundbreaking importance, two things stick out in my mind. Maybe Zelda, like, Ocarina of Time or something. But, you know, there's so many games with so much great music, and it's so wonderful, and it always sticks out to me. but these two that really blew me away

are Super Mario Brothers and Katamari Damasi because I mean it's just so damn good it's just great and I'm a musician so I'm coming at this from like a songwriter perspective it's really delightful that they could write and conceive and produce something

that's the music Harko'iwa of the horses-tach and see-smeting through the sky-gaker is in the dark in the

toki-hacket holocaust golds the solar to make the sky only All right, so we have a few minutes before we need to wrap this up.

So why don't we talk a little bit just about some of the sequels? Bob said he only recognizes one. I don't think everyone else has quite so strict a guideline. But, yeah, what is it about We Love Katamari, Bob, the 2005 sequel, that you think makes it so much more remarkable than the other sequels? The controls are more refined. As we said before, you have the cousins that you. you can play as and you can equip, I believe, two accessories on any character instead of just

one present you find in a level, like in one. And I think the non just roll up everything levels are way more fun and inventive and not as punishing as the, you know, try to roll up the biggest single one item you can, like the cow level or I believe the, there's another level of that kind in this game. I forget what the other thing you roll up is. A bear, yeah. Those levels are just, I just roll up the first thing I see and end it because I can't stand those levels. But yeah, like the the non-roll-up everything levels are much more creative there's one where you're rolling a sumo around and you're collecting calories one where you're

trying to make the biggest fire by rolling up things that will burn it's general it's longer yeah and the music is not as good but it's still very good I just feel like it is the perfect sequel and the logical conclusion of this genre this experience whatever you want to call it

I feel like if it I mean it should have ended there and that's where it ends for me and I really hope that they bring that out in HD because it is the superior game by a little bit. I think it's, I, I love the second one too because it did continue the good music for the, from the first one. It's not quite as good as the first one, but it's almost as good. And it's, so after that, they started recycling the music for all the different games, the ones that I have, and yeah, I've got like beautiful and forever something. Yeah. So they remix them and recycle some of

those songs. So, yeah. But yeah, yeah, it had, yeah, it's not as groundbreaking, but it was, it's a fun set of tunes also. but the we love katamari i think the premise is something like katamari damasi was so popular that everyone wrote in and they're always talking about the fans of katomari want this or want that so you're doing instead of it's yeah that's that's the frame story instead of doing the bidding of your king this time you're fulfilling requests from the fans yeah um so the prince yeah like like very self-referential kind yeah i think it's ultimately about uh kata being unhappy with the success of being a game creator and the pressure of that too yeah there's there's one of the characters on the map screen that basically is Takahashi. And he's a pretty cynical little character.

And this was the last game with his involvement because, you know, he's not, he's not the kind guy to just want to iterate forever. He wanted to go do new stuff. I am a fan of the cover of this game from Japan. Yeah. It's this game where it's like a photograph of just a, I think like all the staff and a bunch of other people and a giraffe on top of the old, the old Namco building. Like, right, it was the building they had before they moved to the Bandai Namco headquarters. And so there's like this kind of time capsule element to it. It's very, I don't know, it's very sweet in that sort of way. Yeah, and it's very like, get this vibe from, from the, from Takahashi and from the whole game.

So the first game did so well. And I like, in a lot of ways, unexpectedly well, I think, for all the people who made it. And so he's like, okay, thank you. I'm glad everyone loved this. Here's some more of it. Have fun with this. But then, like, please go outside and play. Yeah, and it's called, we love catamari here in English, but the Japanese title is Mina No Katamari, which is like everyone's Katamari.

So it's meant to be like, I really feel, I don't know, like I feel there's a difference between everyone and we. Like we is more like inclusive whereas, or you know, like kind of first person inclusive, whereas everyone is just like it's not just us. It's everyone. Beyond that. Wow, I really explained that well. No, that makes it. Like it's, you know, he was, I think the reason kid, they talked him in to do it. second one is he was doing it for the fans and he was willing to go out and do that

one more time. Yeah, that, yeah, yeah. He's a lot like Fumito Oeda and that he was, uh, just came out of nowhere and was allowed to direct a game because the premise was so strong and that he immediately became successful. Like this is the first game he worked on from all I can tell. I think he may have done some like tiny little demos and stuff before this, but this is the first published thing. Like professionally published thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a smash hit right out of the gate. So I will say that I have a font. A soft spot, a bit of fondness for me and my Katamari, which was the PSP game, which was, I guess, 2006. And it's not nearly as good as the other two, but the fact that I could play it on a car trip, like, I took that on a Christmas vacation with me to visit my family.

I think it might have been before the U.S. version came out. But I was just like, I can play Katamari on the go, and that's awesome. I can definitely see the appeal of that. I didn't have a PSP, so I was always really curious, like, you know, you had to use, like, the D-pad and face buttons for the tank. I think you were using the triggers to rotate, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. So, yeah, it was very clumsy in that sense. Like, yeah, the control scheme was not ideal, but you kind of had to make those compromises to play on a portable system.

It's not like there was a mobile system with D-Sticks back then. I've played that one. I have it, but I think the controls sort of turned me off of it or something like that. I can understand that. I mean, even at the time, I was like, this isn't ideal. But you're in a car playing Katamari. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, where the series lost me was with beautiful Katamari, which was the first HD game for PS3 and 360. The beautiful was just 360. Oh, was it just 360? Oh, that's right. That's right. It was a weird choice.

Yeah, we were all like, why is this on 360 exclusive? But it was. There's a reason. Microsoft must have paid a lot of money for that. There was some kind of reason where they were having. technical problems with the PS3 version so they just decided to drop it and go Xbox 360. Well, but then they kept on

with it eventually. Yeah, well, they went and did the other one. Yeah. Yeah, well, beautiful Katamari. I don't know. I just got it last year because I finally got an Xbox 360 last year. And I thought it was cool because it was the first HD one. I mean, I had played the PS3 one before, but

it's neat, but it's like it feels like they just chopped up pieces of other games and threw it together and that's what you get. Yeah, like there was nothing about it that made me say, oh, this is fresh and exciting. It's just like, oh, yeah, it's what I've done before, but the graphics are crispier. Not a cohesive story kind of thing.

And that's even more so what Katamari Forever was, which was the first PS3 one, which is actually like two years later in 2009, but it did, it brought in some of the 360 stages, and then also just had straight up basically HD remakes of some of the stages from the first two games, which, you know, I mean, at that point, it had been, what, four years since we love katamari so so i was fairly happy just to have it on a current system you know with with and you know they use the HD to be able to put in more items at once and all that stuff um they had a new frame story that was suitably goofy with a robo king um i don't know i enjoyed katomari forever and i you know i 100%ed that one too um but it's also it's it's very much it's very much

a remix game it's got it's got stages from basically all the previous games it's got music from the previous game remixed although some of them were fun where they would just like seemed like like they threw darts at a board and picked two songs from the previous games and matched them together into one song.

And sometimes it didn't work so well but sometimes it actually did and it was kind of fun. So I don't know. It's not, yeah, you know, it's not a bastion of originality or anything.

But, you know, as a current-gen Katamari experience, I enjoyed it. I will say that it's not great, but I have spent a lot of time with I Love Katamari because it was one of the first

games from a major publisher to hit a smartphone. Like it was a very early iOS release And it was just Way too much game For the original iPhone to hold To handle Yeah, I think I downloaded the demo of it

And just kind of get up Yeah, so like it chugged It was almost it was it was actually Unplayable on the original phone But every time I got a new iPhone I would go back to I Love Katamari And be like so how much better does this run And eventually it was like

The third iPhone I think Finally got to a point where I was like Oh yes this is tolerable And then I played some of it It was like Hmm yeah okay So do you play it with the tilt controls? I can't remember.

It's been, you know, a decade. Yeah. I honestly can't remember. But I just use that as like my, my kind of go-to, how's my hardware doing? Yeah. Several of the phone games actually just implemented like tilt controls. You literally like, you know, rolling your marble around. And it just.

Sounds bad. I'm not a fan of that control mechanic. Kirby Tilt and Tumble also just doesn't do much for me. Like I want to be able to see my screen straight on, not tilted away from me. Yeah, I mean, honestly, and there's, you know, there's, I think the latest, the latest one that came up mobile was Katamar Amore, Amore, and you can use tilt controls, or you can use virtual thumbsticks. None of these solutions are actually good solutions. There are one or two mobile games. One is for like a cell phone, and one is maybe iPad that aren't just the same gameplay.

There's sort of like a side-scroller. Yeah, there was like an infinite runner one or something. Or there was a cookie-clicker one, actually. There's an infinite runner kind of one, and then there's a side-scroller for something, and I don't remember. I had never paid much attention to them. And, I mean, yeah, these are totally just bond by slapping the license on something to put something out. So they're pretty disposable. So they're just kicking a corpse around at that point.

Pretty much. And I actually forgot until I put the notes together for this episode that there was a release on Vita. Very early that I actually own. Touch my catamara. And according to Wikipedia, in a hands-on preview, oneup.com's Jeremy Parrish had similar comments saying that the series now continues to miss the point. so I guess I didn't have good things to say about that sounds like you that does sound I bet they made you use the back touch panel too

well yeah the gimmick for that game is you can use the back touch file you can either stretch out the catamari wide to roll up more stuff or you can squish it vertically to fit through little that is the stupidest thing anything involving back touch was just the I don't know how that escaped their labs

it's the worst that's why I feel like Nintendo wasted The generation of games on DS, when the first games all had to use a stylist to run around and all this crap, I hated that. So it's the same thing. Yeah, same with Wii. Same with Wii. Like, you got to get the gimmicks out of their systems.

So here's the question is, could you actually do something good with disconnected switch controllers that's different from what it's done before? I mean, they use the joycons. It seems like it'd be pretty easy to detain controls that way. Yeah, they do. They do. You can, you can re-roll. Yeah, you can use the JoyCon separately. Okay.

I haven't tried it, but as they say you can. Do you like using the D-Sticks? I literally only ever use my switch as a handheld system, so I can't speak to that. Sorry. I'm going to have to, okay, I'm going to have to go home and try that again because I haven't done it on with a tilt. I just, I mean, the re-roll is as short as the first game. Is exactly as short, and it's very, you can get through it pretty quickly. So I just played through it as fast as I could because it was awesome and it's over.

But, yeah, so I'm just wondering if they could actually get, stuff together to do a new one, what would we want from the new one? Yeah, that's a great closing question. I have an idea. They should make an arcade game with a giant ball you can actually push around. It's rotating on a like a, you know, platform. Kind of like the table flipping game. Yeah. Katamari flipping game. A huge roller ball. Yeah, like a track ball. A huge track ball. Yeah. And something that could actually crush small children, you know, it's really big. Like beach ball size, but you can roll it side to side? Yeah, that actually I mean, I'd be okay if it were just like a golden T-sized trackball or it could just be like a wheel that you can also kind of tilt while you're pushing it.

So it can be stationary and you can move it. You know, so that'll push the ball instead of having to have a 360 ball. I kind of like the giant 360 trackball because you like, you know, it is a ball. I don't know how you'd mount it in place, you know, to keep it there unless it's just extremely heavy like a giant granite sphere suspended on water. Well, I mean, you could have it like a real trackball where it's half submerged. Yeah, that's reasonable. So that works for arcades, but for like a home system, you can't really do that. Well, there's no feature in the home.

It has to be an arcade. Yikes. Yeah, I can't really think of what I want from Katamari or what I would do with a series. I just know that I want it to continue and to do new things. I realize that's not very helpful. My opinion is less helpful. I don't have anything to offer, but keep doing awesome stuff. My opinion is less helpful.

I want there to be no future for the series. I want the first two games to be available forever on every platform, and that's it. Period. Shut it down, Obama. That's fair. He doesn't have any say anymore. Do something different. He can shut down one game.

He's powerful enough. He's got a Netflix series. All right. So I think we're out of time. So we will wrap at this moment. So, guys, why don't we say our Katamari farewells by signing off and saying where you can find us on the Internet. Retronauts, a podcast, is on iTunes, and I don't know what network will be on by the time you hear this, but you can go to iTunes, and you can go to Retronauts.com and find the podcast there. You can also support us on Patreon by subscribing. You get episodes early and higher bitrate quality with no ads. That's patreon.com slash Retronauts, and your patronage makes this podcast possible. Bob, why don't you do your thing? sure hey it's bob macky i'm on twitter as bob servo and i host two other podcasts talking simpsons which is a chronological exploration of the simpsons and what a cartoon where we look at a different cartoon from a different series every week and jeremy has been on what a cartoon for our episodes about the max and g i joe so those are pretty great and he'll be back in the future i assume i hope probably that's good okay well it's an agreement now uh but if you check out our we have our own patreon it's at patreon dot com slash talking simpsons if you go there and subscribe you'll get hundreds of bonus

bonus podcast. And by the time this episode comes out, we should be doing our mini series Talking of the Hill, which is our podcast series about the first season of King of the Hill, and that'll be available for $5 subscribers. So we have other limited series like Talking Futurama and Talking Critic. And Jeremy's been off Talking Futurama as well, and those are only available at the Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And that's it for me. And I'm Benj Edwards. Right now, I am building joysticks at BXFoundary.com. And believe it or not, This is something I'm not making up. I have been working on a dual stick Katamari joystick.

No kidding. Yes, to play Katamari because someone suggested it. So I'm trying to target the system. I want one for Switch. I'm playing with analog and digital representations of analog. But since I've done the dual stick virtual boy thing, it seemed like an extension. I love how specific these are getting.

Yeah, well, it's so much fun to do it, like the ridiculousness of just a controller for one game, you know, but it's fun. You got to let me borrow it before you ship it out. Yeah, sure. I could build you one, you know. All right, and Ben? I'm Ben Elgin. I am on Twitter as Kieran, K-I-R-I-N-N. I sometimes have a retro blog at Kieran's Retro Closet at Tumblr,

but I'm probably going to move that and relaunch it somewhere else. I'll let you all know if you keep following the podcast. And that's about it because I don't have a Patreon. All right. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, as GameSpite on Twitter. And you should also check out my YouTube channel, the Retronauts Video Works Project where I've been chronicling

the complete history of a lot of video game systems including Virtual Boy and let me tell you there's actually some pretty rad stuff on Virtual Boy that was obscured by the fact that the system was garbage. So check that out

and we'll be back with another podcast in a week and every other Friday with a bonus episode. Look forward to it. Goodbye. But, but you're not

an important dream I'm going to end until

at there there are waiting I'm Rory Rolny

star I stop stop stop Don't Don't Don't

Don't Rolny Rolita Let's Go ahead Go Go Go

Thank you.