Katamari Damacy golden
by Kit

Wednesday, September 8 2004

Rebuild the stars with Namco's PS2 exclusive.

Namco Hometek Inc. announced today that Katamari Damacy, the highly addictive and immensely entertaining action game has gone gold.

In Katamari Damacy, the player assumes the role of the Prince of the Cosmos, whose father – the great King – managed to accidentally destroy all of the stars in the sky. As the pint-sized princely son, the player is tasked with re-creating the starry skies by rolling around the cleverly designed locations to collect objects and build up their “katamari” -- a Japanese word for clump or large mass. The Prince must gather as many objects as possible, regardless of their shape or size, to clean up the King’s gigantic mistake.

“Namco’s ‘rolling, sticking, never-stopping, ever-swelling clump of stuff that makes a star out of everyone and everything game’ couldn’t be more addictive, more eccentric, or more fun,” said Rod Nakamoto, Executive Vice President of Research and Development for Namco Hometek Inc. “Katamari Damacy’s easy-to-pick-up gameplay mechanics and humorous storyline are sure to appeal to people of all ages.”

In Katamari Damacy, (which translates to “clump of souls” in Japanese), players must grow their “katamari” by rolling over anything and everything, stopping at nothing -- and we mean nothing -- to ensure they have gathered enough objects to re-create the starry skies. The larger the player’s “katamari” grows, the larger the objects the player can amass along the way. The player’s “katamari” can quickly grow from a fraction of an inch to a monstrous mass in no time by rolling over hundreds of unusual objects of all sizes and shapes including cars, cookies, lamp posts, people, skyscrapers, whales, Ferris wheels and cruise ships.

Katamari Damacy features a single-player story mode and a two-player battle mode to allow for optimal ball rolling pandemonium and object collecting fun. Katamari Damacy is rated ‘E” for “everyone” by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and carries a suggested retail price of $19.99. The game will be available in stores nationwide beginning the week of September 21,2004. For more information please visit the Katamari Damacy Web site at: http://www.namco.com

--- Kit