POSTED BY

Brandon Boyer

AT 11:36 AM
Saturday December 13, 2008

iPhone

katamari

Katamari rolls onto iPhone

katamariiphone.jpgNamco Bandai, it seems, is keen on wholly unannounced surprises. Like the sudden re-emergence of the entirely obscure Mr. Driller spinoff Star Trigon for the iPod, the publisher has quietly released a tilt-sensitive port of Katamari Damacy for the iPhone.

I Love Katamari is necessarily downsized from its console and handheld big brothers, but fully 3D (as opposed to the isometric mobile version) and every bit as warmly familiar. Each of the game's five stages is split into four separate modes: a story mode in which the King requests a single item to be rolled (which unlocks subsequent levels), a time attack to roll as much as you can within the limit, an exact size mode to roll to a perfect fit, and an eternal mode which lets you freely roll however you'd like.

It's safe to say, though, that the iPhone struggles mightily under the weight of your pile of collections, though a reboot and a quick switch to Airplane mode seemed to bring it a bit more under control. And, even moreso than Sega's Super Monkey Ball, there's a very pronounced acclimation period before your dual-analog brain lets go of that need for precision and lets your hands do the work (even still, there were moments when my whole body contorted hoping to squeeze just an ounce more torque out of the device).

But what it does do right is recapture the harrowing anxiety of the originals. I've yet to finish a level with more than 25 or 30 seconds on the clock, which leads me to believe that all my backward bends are exactly to design. Creator Keita Takahashi may have put the series behind him years ago, but there's still a part of me very happy to have it in my hands again.

I Love Katamari [iTunes link]

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16 Comments

lecti

#1 – 12:56 PM December 13, 2008

There goes my hard-earned cash :)

Seg

#2 – 1:47 PM December 13, 2008

What's funny is that I just bought another game. Then this comes along! I'll wait till I finish the one I just bought, then on to rolling up Katamari.

I agree that it's really strange the release was so silent. Makes me wonder if they released it early to weed out any bugs...

theawesomerobot

#3 – 5:58 PM December 13, 2008

Eh, they need a patch for the game. At one point I had to hold my phone upside-down to get forward momentum.

Also, they need to take off that blur effect when you "level up" it just kills the framerate, which is surprisingly not bad otherwise.

Not too shabby though, if they fix those things I think it's a hit.

zuzu

#4 – 10:25 PM December 13, 2008

When people mentioned games on the iPhone, this was the one that I said I would want. (Although Super Monkey Ball was a great initial alternative.)

Avram / Moderator

#5 – 11:16 PM December 13, 2008

Will this also work on the iPod Touch?

Isaac Cates

#6 – 6:43 AM December 14, 2008

There's no way to play Katamari on a regular desktop / laptop Mac, is there?

franko

#7 – 8:45 AM December 14, 2008

this makes me so happy.

skatanic

#8 – 10:57 AM December 14, 2008

This frustrates me because i seem to recall the Katamari creator saying he wasn't going to make the game for Wii because he thought the controls were stupid and gimmicky and that it should be about game play and not the controls. At least a small part of the reason i bought my Wii was on the hopes of an awesome new Katamari and now it has been skipped over for the iPhone. *sigh*

theawesomerobot

#9 – 4:39 PM December 14, 2008

@SKATANIC - this is barely a NEW game, it's basically very simplified standard environments from previous Katamari games.

I wouldn't be upset about anything, I'd be kind of annoyed if a port like this was put on the wii, because I'd want something more creative.

I doubt the creator had any sort of hand in this whatsoever - there was probably just one guy in the corner at Konami putting this together for the past few months.

LEW

#10 – 6:08 PM December 14, 2008

Why oh why is it on iphone but not the Wii or DS?

Purly

#11 – 6:47 PM December 14, 2008

I can't get past the second level. What the heck is matsuo hoshino anyways?

theawesomerobot

#12 – 7:33 PM December 14, 2008

@Lew - this game would be a disgrace for either of those consoles, it's very basic – fun for the iphone, but that's about it.

@Purly - it's a reference to the original Katamari game I believe, he's a boy who wants to be an astronaut(like his dad)! But basically he's just the boy wandering that level.

shMerker

#13 – 12:07 AM December 15, 2008

In the first two Katamari games(I haven't played any others) there were a large number of named characters that didn't really do anything but get rolled up. The game had a browser that let you see information about all the things you had rolled up and had brief biographies for all of them. I'm not really sure what they intended by that but it was sort of wonderfully incongruous the way that seemingly everything in the game had a specific identity even though the only distinction the player needed to deal with was how things moved and how big they were. Otherwise it was all pretty much the same substance.

LEW

#14 – 8:13 AM December 15, 2008

@THEAWESOMEROBOT: are you saying Katarmi in general would be a disgrace on with Wii or DS? If so I couldn't disagree more. Substitute dual analog sticks with two wiimotes and you viola you are the prince rolling up everything in site. On DS rolling the katarmi with a stylus just sounds fun. Both systems controls are precise and a fun way to control the game. I think done properly either system would be superior to standard controls.

freshyill

#15 – 12:46 PM December 15, 2008

OK, I bought it and I like it, but it needs two fixes... 1. it's too damn slow. They need to speed it up. 2. I shouldn't have to tilt it so far that I can't see the screen. Super Monkey Ball was too sensitive at first, but they fine-tuned it with later releases, and now it's not bad. This has the exact opposite problem. It's fun, but they need to make these fixes.

theawesomerobot

#16 – 6:13 PM December 15, 2008

Bah, I said Katamari was made by Konami above. Damn K's, it is actually Namco.

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