Tucked in the back of Namco's booth, literally behind the far wall of the area and with the edge of South Hall the only thing near it, Namco displayed the PS2 game Katamaridamacy. Katamaridamacy (or Katamari Damashii in Japan) is Namco's unique little game about rolling a ball of stuff until you've got a much bigger ball of stuff - for as everyone knows aliens need more stuff, and prefer to get it from Earth every time they can.

In Katamaridamacy (a title that can't be conveniently contracted down to much of anything beyond K), you play a little alien guy about three inches tall tasked by your king to roll a ball about four inches in diameter around to collect anything you can. When you start, the ball is tiny and can only pick up things similarly small and light like flowers and various bits of debris. As it gets larger, though, bigger and bigger items can be added on to the ball until eventually things that were obstacles with the potential to knock things off your giant spherical collection of stuff are simply more fodder for your rolling ball of doom. The game lets you know when you've reached a new level with a blurring effect, which also pulls the camera back somewhat for a better view. Eventually I found myself adding baseball bats, dogs, cats, pigeons, shrubs, gas cans, and all sorts of odd things to the ball, all of them visible on the edges of it, and even the interior if you look close enough.

I got a few rounds in on the E3 demo and failed miserably on my first attempt. The levels are timed, and even with a bit of experience I found that I was just making a bit more than the level requirements before time ran out. The target size was 1.5 meters so I didn't actually get to see what you can do when the ball really gets growing, like picking up people, cars, and buildings.

One thing that did surprise me about the game was the control scheme. It uses tank-style controls: both analog sticks up for forward, one up to turn, one up one down to rotate, etc. The programmers also helpfully added a camera reset activated by clicking both sticks down; although, I found that once I stopped zipping around like mad and started exercising a bit of care in what I was doing, that I needed it far less than when I first started playing. There was also a way to use them to run, and a gap with a ramp near it that I'm pretty sure I could have cleared if I could have figured out how to do it, but running either wasn't enabled in the E3 demo or, more likely, I wasn't doing it quite right.

At the moment there's no release date for Katamaridamacy, but the E3 version was in full English, so hopefully Namco wasn’t just teasing us with it. I hope it won't be added to the Lost In Translation pile occupied by games like Giftpia and Rent a Hero #1. And Namco, while you're making plans for games like this, how about giving Mr. Driller another chance while you're at it?

Watch the trailer (MPEG, 320 x 240, 1:39, 10.4MB)

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· · · James Cunningham