20 years on, Katamari Damacy is still the most "video game" video game there is

People who played games from a young age often don't really understand how difficult games are. You do actually have to learn how to play them, and having spent time with adults that didn't grow up playing them trying to adjust to using dual analogue stick controllers, it's interesting to watch them figure out how to move about in 3D spaces. Thankfully, there's a type of games that I like to call gateway games that often help people understand games as a whole.

These can come in a lot of different forms: while potentially difficult for those that struggle with 3D games, games like Uncharted are a good introduction because they're familiar, many people have watched Indiana Jones after all, and the "cinematic" vibe is something that could easily acclimate a newcomer. Then you have games on consoles like the Wii, with simple, intuitive motion controls that anyone can play, or 2D platformers which often amount to just, left, right, up, down, and jump (I am being reductive, I know, you don't have to leave a comment). And then, there's games like Katamari Damacy.

Katamari Damacy Reroll | Launch Trailer | PS4

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It's Katamari Damacy's birthday today, celebrating 20 whole years of existence, a game that was incredibly fresh when it arrived, and still stands out from the crowd even now all these years later. I think it is also an impossible game to describe to someone that doesn't really play games. In it, you play as a tiny Prince, who must use his Katamari, which is basically one of those spiky balls you put in the tumble dryer, to roll up anything and everything, then turn that into stars and planets, all because your dad, the King of all Cosmos, let loose a little bit too hard and destroyed most of our galaxy. Not the most approachable of games, methinks, and this is coming from one of the biggest Kingdom Hearts fans around.

Let's say, somehow, this doesn't actually confuse or put off someone looking to get into video games - it's a bit of a wacky concept, but there are plenty of weirdos out there, so it's entirely possible. But then there's another, bigger issue. The controls are absolutely wack. To be clear, I mean this in the most complimentary way possible, but it can't be denied that they're incredibly strange.

You would think that like in most other 3D games, to move around, you use the left analogue stick, and to lock around you use the right, right? Nope! Movement in Katamari requires you to move both analogue sticks at all times, with different inputs allowing you to move in different ways. For example, pushing forward on both sticks makes you go forward, pushing just on the left stick lets you turn right, and pushing both sticks all the way to the right lets you move right and vice versa.

It's a strange control scheme, and at first often makes for a difficult, maybe even frustrating experience. But then, wouldn't moving around a spiky ball collecting pencils, dogs, and buildings be a bit of a tricky experience? It honestly feels like quite a smart but subtle bit of narrative design because of its awkwardness. While running around as Nathan Drake, shooting up baddies feels like something we could see in any visual medium, there just isn't any way to accurately convey the experience of Katamari in anything but video game form.

I think it's essentially the most "video game" video game there is because of that fact, not least to mention how arcadey it is, even compared to other titles of the time. All of this is uplifted massively by its incredible shibuya-kei soundtrack, a genre of music often compared to elevator music. There's just something so whimsically surreal about the score, made even stranger by the fact that some of the tracks have lyrics (think about it, how many games outside of Sonic actually feature songs with lyrics).

Sure, it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and it's a hard sell, but that's what makes it such a special little game two whole decades later. There have been games that have come close to capturing its vibe, Donut County is obviously massively inspired by it, but it also has a much more defined story, so feels approachable for that reason. The only game I could think of that harkens back to the days of video-game-ass video games is last year's excellent Hi-Fi Rush, though even then it's helped by a soundtrack that features the likes of Nine Inch Nails.

I don't think we'll never see anything like Katamari again, or even that there isn't something that hasn't achieved the same thing - I can't play every game there is after all - but even now, Katamari still holds the top spot of "video game" video games for me. Now I just have to figure out how to explain that to the non-gamers…