#3 — Katamari Damacy
475 points • 18 mentions • Highest rank: #3 (Büge, Gringr, Kirin)
Featured Track:
Lonely Rolling Star
Que Sera Sera
Katamari on the Rocks
The Moon and the Prince
Composed by:
Yuu Miyake
Asuka Sakai
Akitaka Tohyama
Yoshihito Yano
Yuri Misumi
Hideki Tobeta
Platform: Playstation 2 •
Release date: March 18, 2004
Let's roll up to be a single star in the sky
Na naa, na na na na na na, na na na na na na…
As soon as you hear that, you know you're in for something different.
"Katamari Nah-Nah", as it's officially known, is how the game opens. On the face of it, it seems like a curious decision; where most games would entice the player with something mysterious and intriguing, or grab them by immediately blasting something exciting, Katamari Damacy opts for… a man humming. And yet, it's undeniably charming. It's a strange way to introduce what would become an iconic theme— but, well, Katamari is strange.
The theme immediately re-appears as the grand and celebratory
"Katamari on the Rocks", to score the pre-title movie; and finally, it receives a gentle piano rendition in the title screen theme,
"Overture".
The repetition can be seen as a way of hammering home "Nah-Nah", but with three wildly different variations on the same melody, it also serves to hint at the variety of the music to come.
Katamari Damacy's soundtrack draws upon a huge swath of genres, including j-pop, electronic, jazz, lounge, samba and rap. It's an eclectic mixture, and yet nothing feels out of place; partly because the game inherently lends itself to a zany and unpredictable soundtrack, but also because the music is tied together with a common subject matter and general silliness.
But don't take that silliness to mean Miyake and company just tossed the songs out! Miyake's guiding motive was to make music that sounded "familiar, but not trendy", so they wouldn't feel immediately dated. To accomplish this, the soundtrack takes classic genres and puts them in a new light. Songs like
"Que Sera Sera" and
"Gin and Tonic and Red Red Roses" take lounge and jazz and coat them in a glossy pop sheen. On the other end is
"The Moon and the Prince", which is a fairly standard j-pop song that incorporates rapped vocals and faux-disc scratching. The culmination of this melding of American and Japanese music is surely
"Cherry Tree Times",
which— according to Miyake— is essentially a 70s American sitcom theme reworked into a faux-Japanese folk song.
Of course, there's more at play than just an East-meets-West sensibility.
"WANDA WANDA" is an electronic track built entirely around a vocoder-distorted phrase—
wanda, as the title suggests— repeated endlessly, like a pastiche of Daft Punk's
"Around the World". Meanwhile, the King of All Cosmos' theme,
"Fugue #7777", is done purely with vocalizations, making it both grand and silly— perfect for the kind of character he is. And closing the game is
"Katamari of Love",
a grand, heartfelt ballad that references the main theme. It's cheesy as all get out, but for a game— and soundtrack— like this, that's actually a positive; it fully embraces the cheese and makes for a truly emotional closer… that it plays as you roll the countries of the world into a katamari is the icing on the cake.
Our featured track is "Lonely Rolling Star". Is it a coincidence that the Tyrant favourite is the song that plays on the first stage you can roll up humans? I'd wager
no. At least, that's why it resonates so strongly for me: the moment I rolled up my first human is the moment that Katamari Damacy's concept revealed itself to me for the absurd horror it truly is. That that moment is scored by an upbeat, encouraging song makes it a truly unforgettable moment.
You're lonely rolling star!
Aside from the main theme, "Lonely Rolling Star" was the breakout hit of the game (so to speak). It appeared (unchanged) in Me & My Katamari; was remade into
"Sayonara Rolling Star" in Beautiful Katamari; and Katamari Forever featured
two versions: a
remix of "Sayonara" and another new take in
"Lonely Rolling No More".
Truly, "Rolling" is what Katamari's all about.
~ conchobhar