It's hard to describe a game like Katamari Damacy. The feeling of happiness I got when playing it is the reason I play video games in the first place, and though I'm betting there will be games coming out this year that are technically "better," I seriously doubt I'll be remembering them as long or as fondly as Katamari Damacy.

There's a plot going on here, but - in classic gaming tradition - it's a cheap excuse to hang the ensuing insanity on. Your father, the King of All Cosmos, destroyed all the stars in the sky while off on a bender. As prince, you get to fix this by rolling around a ball, called a katamari, that sticks to stuff. Smaller stuff is easy fodder for the ball, medium stuff may or may not stick to it depending on what sometimes seem to be some arbitrary criteria, and large stuff can be obstacles that if slammed into too hard may not only knock things off but send you flying as well.

Everything in the game, however, is potentially one more thing to add on to your growing mass. If it exists, you can add it onto your collection, if you can only get the katamari large enough for it to stick. The immense satisfaction you get when the dog, mouse, bull, person, car, rocket-powered bear, or whatever that was always in your way finally is not only no longer a threat but stuck to your continually growing mass of stuff is truly wonderful. Then, at the end of a set time, the King of All Cosmos calls you back from the level, hopefully with you having amassed a katamari larger than the goal.

The thing about Katamari Damacy is that there's been so much press, both in terms of previews, reviews, and general ramblings by everyone who's played it, that at this point I'm guessing this is at least the third article you've read on it. Adjectives like "wonderful," "fun," "amazing," "unique," and "fantastic" have all been (deservedly) applied to this game. Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry gave it a Good Design Award, making it, along with Taiko Drum Master, the first video game ever to receive that prize. No two ways about it, this is a great game worthy of your money, and the amazing soundtrack alone is worth the full $20 price of admission.

Having established that you need to own this game, let's look at some pictures.

You start your adventure on your unnamed home planet, and each item on there is a function of some sort. The house lets you save, the tree lets you keep track of all the stuff you've collected (divided up into several sub-categories so you generally can tell where you need to go to fill in the gaps in the collection), the star lets you see all the stars and constellations you've recreated, etc. Floating in space behind the home planet are two other places: a mushroom where you can go for multiplayer gaming and Earth, where all the action awaits. Any completed level is always open for further exploration, and score is measured by how large the katamari grew during the stage. Though the game itself is fairly easy to beat, there's always a way to improve your score, add another item to the collection, or, if you've done particularly well in a few of the levels, just cruise around without the time limit seeing how far the katamari can be grown.

On the first few levels you start small. Really small. Possibly even tiny. The Level 1 goal of 10 centimeters isn't going to make you feel giant, but as the game progresses you need to get more and more stuff in the ball. Candies, cards, TurboGrafx-like hu-cards, batteries, eventually the game machine, radio, and even the table itself can all be absorbed if only you can grow the katamari large enough within the time limit. Later levels start you off larger but also have siginifcantly larger goals to achieve. The bowling pins, dogs, street lamps, people, and, if you can really move fast, the buildings themselves will submit to the mass of the katamari.

Also in each level is a present from the King. It can be found hidden in an odd spot, some trickier than others, and it's an item you can equip on the Prince. Most items are just for looks (I personally like the guitar), but there's also a camera you can use to take pictures from first-person mode and save to the memory card.

It's hard to adequately convey the sense of scale in the game. Though the Prince never gets larger than the 8 (or so) centimeters he starts the game at, the katamari itself never stops growing. It's simply an amazing thing to see the ball, started off at only a meter, eventually grow from the point where the mountain is too big to really even see outside of first person mode and a fairly lengthy roll into the distance, to a piece of the terrain, to an obstacle, and eventually into just another piece of the katamari.

And yes, when he goes into water, the image of the Prince in the lower right corner of the screen does put on a little pair of goggles and a snorkel. It's just another one of the dozens of charming little details that make this game a joy to see.

Katamari Damacy is going to be one of those games remembered far beyond its time. Like Grand Theft Auto 3, Rez, or a handful of others, it gets into the head of the player and works a kind of magic. The combination of all the elements, from the colorful graphics, wonderful soundtrack, intuitive controls, and overall sense of charm combine into something that its few flaws can't diminish. True, the katamari can grow a bit too large to see around sometimes, and true, you can get stuck in odd places with an unhelpful camera now and then. But, I only remember these flaws when I sit down to purposefully take the game apart. What stays with me, what I think of now and will wager any amount on that I'll think of years down the road, is that this game made me happy when I played it and gave me something new.

· · · James Cunningham