ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title

There’s a game available for the PS2 called "Katamari Damacy".  I’ve never played it, but I’m absolutely fascinated by it.  Train-crash/moldy-meat/Brad&Jen-breakup style fascinated with it.

As I understand it, you have a ball.  You roll it around.  It picks stuff up.

That’s it. 

Now, I understand that it could get kinda interesting as it gets more stuff attached to it, and gets larger – we’re talking lipsticks, and fire hydrants, and cows, and hot-dog stands.  But seriously, you roll a ball around.  It picks stuff up.  Why is it creating such a sensation?  Why are people so obsessed with it?

And people really are obsessed with it.  Here‘s a Play-Doh version of it.  Here‘s the puppet.  Here‘s where you can buy a hat that makes you look like the ball.  Here‘s an origami version. Oh, here‘s the real page for it too.  (Incidentally, that page talks about a "royally contagious storyline".  I’m definitely missing something.)

Alex told me about this story: In LA, a Katamari-Damacy-playing chick tried to wrench the steering wheel out of her husband’s hand because she thought a mail box would be interesting to pick up.  And I thought rotating and slotting blocks in my sleep was an indicator of too much Tetris-playing.

This is why the PS2 is ahead of XBox – they have weird, Japanese games that make absolutely no sense.  We have Halo 2.  It’s clear.