It’s Never a Bad Time To Remember Katamari Damacy

March 29, 2024

I’m a bit behind on news this week, but when catching up I saw this article from Polygon about the Katamari Damacy soundtrack hitting streaming. This lead me down a weird rabbit hole.

First off, the soundtrack for Katamari Damacy is one of my all time favourites. While listening to the original game’s music, I wondered what else from the series might be available. I’m also a huge fan of the We Love Katamari soundtrack, but that sadly seems hard to find at the moment. I did find this new remix album, Denonbu Katamarespect Remix EP, released on March 15. It’s pretty wild, but there are some interesting tracks on it. I quite like the high energy take on Lonely Rolling Star, and got a kick out the wild acid house version of Moon & Prince. I have no idea what’s going on with some of the desynced percussion halfway through the Katamari on the Rocks remix, but I also like that overall.

While I was listening to this, I thought I should find my original copy of the game. I remember picking the game up at an EB Games on launch day. No one at the store knew what the heck the game was about, and the person selling it to me was excited that anyone was interested in it. I found my copy, but looking on the back it said it was copyright 2003. Looking on Wikipedia, it seems that March 18, 2004 was the Japanese release. It was released in North America on September 21, 2004. So what was up with the 2003 date?

Turns out it’s when the game system concepts were patented! You can view a PDF version of the patent here, and it’s definitely worth a look for those wonky patent illustrations of the Prince of all Cosmos.

So, yeah, not the 20th anniversary of Katamari Damacy in my neck of the woods yet. Still, I’m always happy to be reminded about this quirky gem of a series.