Talk:Katamari Damacy

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[edit] Katamari object-grabbing ability

The sentence I wrote...
"As such, the game will sometimes defy common sense by making an object such as an open beach umbrella more difficult to pick up than a small car."
...is proven by the requirements of 5m 47cm 8mm to pick up a Gangster Car, while Beach Umbrella (red) requires 5m 61cm. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 09:50, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the game's relevant algorithms determines their sizes by bounding spheres of the object's model? --I am not good at running 23:32, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
I figured the programmers just arbitrarily determined a size at which a katamari could pick an object up; the object list tells you what size the katamari must be to pick an object up, and at really large scales you get very nice round numbers. Nifboy 23:49, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Not bounding spheres, because that would make poles hard to pick up rather than easy. It's mostly volume, partly programmatic whimsy, I say. --Darksasami 21:16, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Translation of title

A note about the "direct translation" from Japanese. As I understand it, the direct translation is "Clump-Soul" not "clump of souls". This creates the possibility that the souls are not what are being "clumped" together but rather that soul refers to the essence or spirit of the person doing the clumping. A passion for clumping. One who clumps things. I don't think we should jump from the meaning of two words individually to a particular relationship of the two such as "clump OF souls".

I also think that translation sounds a bit muddy. Before this edit, the article stated that it meant "Soul of the Clump", which seems to agree more with what I've read on various websites. Anyone know someone who's fluent in Japanese? --Poiuyt Man (talk) 06:54, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Because the edit was made by an anonymous user, with no source on the information, and since it disagrees with all previous iterations of the article, I'm changing it back to "Soul of the Clump" for now. --Poiuyt Man (talk) 06:57, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Basic Japanese would use the possessive particle の (no) to describe this "of", which is absent here. Perhaps a more accurate translation would be "Clump-Spirit". -- Another Anonymous User
The posessive no is not always required in this sort of grammatical instance. To remain in the video game title idiom, Zelda no Densetsu translates literally to "Zelda's Legend" or "Legend of Zelda." However, Seiken Densetsu translates to "Holy-Sword Legend," which would be grammatically rendered in English as "Legend of the Holy Sword" even though the possessive particle no is absent. To put it another way, I would say "Clump Soul" and "Soul of the Clump" are virtually interchangeable correct English translations. I find more and more that Japanese/English translation is far from an exact science. Druff 1:56, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Yet another curious thing I'm aware of is that 魂 is actually usually rendered in Japanese phonetics as "tamashii," rather than "damashii." I'd heard this said in a couple of video game forums, but never paid any heed. But when a trusted friend of mine who's a fluent Japanese speaker and works as a translator mentioned it, I decided to check for myself. Sure enough, according to the two Japanese dictionaries I've consulted, tamashii means soul or spirit, while there are no entries for damashii. There have definitely been other occasions where I was surprised to see "da" used in loan words where I personally would have expected "ta" and perhaps vice versa, so I don't think this is an issue, per se. Just an interesting bit of minutae. Damashii is official, and you can even hear them pronounce it as such in the Japanese versions of both Katamari games. Druff 23:52, 22 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I've studied Japanese for seven years so I know that when two words are combined together ( such as in Katamari Damashii ), the initial consonant of the second word often becomes "voiced". That is to say, K becomes G, S becomes Z, T becomes D etc. This easily explains how we have Katamari Damashii but only Tamashii is found in dictionaries.
I had thought for some reason that this was limited to on readings (i.e. in compounds) and didn't happen with kun readings. Can you perhaps give some examples of kun readings in which this happens? —HorsePunchKid→龜 05:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
There's lots. "Hako" from "gomibako" is kun-yomi. "Sushi" from "kaiten-zushi" is also kun-yomi. Notice that it doesn't matter whether the antecedent is on-yomi or kun-yomi. Rather, what determines the presence or absence of rendaku is "Lyman's Law." (see rendaku) - Exitmoose 05:39, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Great info, thanks! —HorsePunchKid→龜 06:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it bears noting that the word "Katamari Damashii" is eerily similar to the WWII Japanese propaganda term "Yamato Damashii" (大和魂, the spirit of the Japanese people). This addresses the above comment about whether or not the term is better translated as "spirit of the clump" or "a clump of sprits" (the former). Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if the title of this game is in a sense meant as a sort of satire on this term. It'd be like an American company making a quirky soccer game called "Four score and seven goals ago." (Okay, lame, but you get the idea.) Exitmoose 16:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought about the use of "somewhat more loosely" to describe "soul clump" as a translation, and as this is not merely artistic license but a completely different (and wrong) translation of "Katamari Damashii", I think it should be removed from the article. Any objections? - Exitmoose 04:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think "soul clump" is completely wrong. I'm no expert, but in my limited experience, when nouns are strung together like that, you can basically read it as though の is inserted between the words. Hence 塊の魂, or soul of the clump. If one wanted to say "clump of souls", one would reverse the order of the kanji. —HorsePunchKid→龜 05:11, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I am native Japanese so I can explain what fun in that title "Katamari Damacy". In Japan, -Damashii is used like "Proud of ~" at some groups (team, school, company and others. Historically, we used "Yamato Damashii" as "We are the Japanese".). So we can feel as "I'm now feeling proud of making good Katamari!" Of course, it is nonsense "Damashii" using. This "Damashii" is tied with game's situation: collecting the objects and "The World is one". So, "Katamari Damashii" equals "The proud of Our World", at least somewhat of meaning. Again, this is Nonsense using. It's true message but not serious. The decipherment in article "Tama + Shii" is reading too much into. Certainly "四囲" is meaning circumference, but there is not momentum of word, or impact. Tamashii is interpreted as 1-word recognition "魂" in Japanese mind.(Katamari is rough, big, gang, no delicate. So swiftness is most important part of title words.) Sorry about my poor english skill. 60.33.32.46 20:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that the translation "clump spirit" is accurate, in the same way that we would say "school spirit" or "team spirit" to mean "we are proud of our school/team". Someone who really likes playing Katamari Damacy could be said to have Katamari spirit, and come full circle. --Darksasami 21:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jumboman

Jumboman is certainly not important, but he's one of the more common figures. -- A Link to the Past 18:14, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

So give him a short mention, not a whole section. Nifboy 18:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking about making a section devoted to references found in items, and reoccuring items. -- A Link to the Past 18:32, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Drunk?

Whence this: "The King of All Cosmos got drunk one night..."? In playing the game, it appears that the King goes wild after seeing how well you roll a katamari. --Darksasami 20:07, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

He destroys all the stars long before you touch your first Katamari. That's why he has you roll the Katamari - to roll up stuff to remake the stars with. He went on a bender :) --Golbez 20:26, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
Simply untrue. Try it: start a new game. You roll a katamari around an empty place that he built. When you've demonstrated all the moves, he then goes wild and breaks all the stars. --Darksasami 20:31, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, this is actually a discrepancy between the JP and US versions. In the JP version it states that he destroyed them because he was drunk. In the US version, I think they didn't want to mention alcohol so he just destroys them on an eccentric whim. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:32, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
Didn't he feel the "call of the wild" in the US version? - A Man In Black (Talk | Contribs) 03:50, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I thought it was heavily implied that the King was drunk in the US version. Nifboy 08:41, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Right, I just believe it was not explicitly stated. In the JP version it is. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:07, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
What are you talking about, Darksasami? That was a tutorial--it's the entryway to the game, not "canonical" as if there barely even is such a thing in the Katamari series. The tutorial in most games is considered to be "out of the game;" some games try to incporporate it in best as possible, but the cinematic of him destroyign the stars was not due to you "learning to play the game." It was part of the story. Lockeownzj00 16:57, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Soundtrack

Does anybody have a scan of the cover to the OST? It'd be a nice addition to the soundtrack section. All I've found online are little tiny thumbnails. humblefool®Deletion Reform 02:31, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, check the amazon.com Japan site for the soundtrack. If you click on the thumbnail, it opens a larger version. Of course, it's in Japanese, so I don't know if this is appropriate for the English side, but it's better than nothing, right? - Exitmoose 17:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Metric system?

To quote the article: "This, combined with the fact that the game uses the Metric System and that all of the text on objects in the background is in Japanese, come together to make a game that looks and feels distinctly foreign to those not from Japan". Why would the metric system be strange for people outside of Japan? The majority of the world uses the metric system, only the US and UK is significantly different... I say we strike out the metric part, as it only has meaning for those two countries (and hardly constitutes the rest of the world).--Vertigo200 04:49, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's US-centric, but to the US, metric is foreign. Nifboy 05:06, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm waiting for more comments. If I don't receive any nays, I'll remove the phrase or specify that the metric part is valid for US/UK only. I know it's a bit of nitpicking, but this is an encyclopedia, we have to be precise.--Vertigo200 17:18, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Vertigo200. The metric system is not nearly as foreign as it used to be to US audiences and it's not foreign at all to the majority of the rest of the world. solaro 19:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Ops, someone has already removed the "offending" phrase (at least I can't find it anymore)...--Vertigo200 20:08, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Presents and organization?

I cut a sentence on presents from Story and added a bit on it to Gameplay. I'm still not happy with it; it's awfully lonely there. I think Presents and Cousins should both be subsets of Gameplay, but Cousins are stuck under Characters. I rather think that, as they have very little individual character to speak of, the Cousins could be removed from Characters and added to Gameplay. Thoughts on this? --Darksasami 21:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured box

I have a lot of problems with the box that will be appearing on the main page in a few hours, Wikipedia:Today's_featured_article/November_12,_2005. Not only are there numerous typographical and grammatical errors, but I also think it could be improved in a few ways stylistically. Compare that box to the one at User:Silence/Katamari and tell me what you think. If you like my version but think some things need to be changed or reverted, feel free to edit it and/or comment here. If noone objects, I'll have the current one replaced shortly. -Silence 21:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with your concerns. The box is taken from an old version, for one thing. I can't help but notice that you've reverted "thought" to "thinking", which breaks the parallel construction by using two different parts of speech ("dexterity" and "thought" are both nouns, which is superior phrasing). Other than that, I don't see many problems with your adjustments, and I'd like to see the front page box changed to match. --Darksasami 22:24, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
"Thinking" can also be used as a noun (of continuous action), and I feel "thinking" conveys the meaning slightly better, as "thinking is needed" indicates "you need to think", whereas "thought is needed" indicates "you need to have thought(s)"—just as "dexterity is needed" indicates "you need to have dexterity". But if you disagree, certainly "thought" can be used both in the box and on the main page (since I reverted it there, sorry); the point is exceedingly minor, after all. I'm just worried about getting this change made as quickly as possible; my admin buddy is too busy to do it. -Silence 22:46, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, years of professional editing have made me picky. To be blunt, I'm correct. :) The world won't come to an end if it's "thinking" though. --Darksasami 23:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Some reasoning would be appreciated, but if you insist. I'll change it to "thought as well as dexterity are needed to complete a mission". Won't make a difference if we can't get the actual box that'll appear on the main page changed, though... -Silence 23:18, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Googling for parallel construction returned the following helpful site: http://www.myenglishteacher.net/parallelism.html Of note is the warning: "The items in the list must be all nouns, all infinitives, all prepositional phrases, all gerunds, or all clauses." "Thinking" is a gerund, and "dexterity" is a noun.
At any rate, I do hope that the box is updated in time...thanks for your work in getting it done! --Darksasami 23:50, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Mission accomplished! Got it updated right before it went Featured, thanks to smoddy! And I avoided the grammar problem altogether by replacing "thought" with the much clearer "strategy". -Silence 00:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
The game fall under both the puzzle and action game genres...
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo... --Darksasami 01:20, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Oh, hush. Someone got it fast. :P -Silence 02:33, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spoiler template

I propose we put a spoiler warning on the article. It is, for those who don't know, coded as {{spoiler}} and shows up like this:

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Although there isn't a plot, it describes the "Make the Moon" level in detail, along with other things. I say that if it's borderline, like this article, do it. --HereToHelp|talk 03:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

There already is one. Look right above the image of the King, after the first two paragraphs of Story. -Silence 03:37, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pun in name?

Are you sure that "dama" and "shii", which mean "ball" and "circumference", respectively, aren't at least in part puns, as I'd previously conjectured in this article? --Jonathan Drain 23:32, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[1]

It's possible, but I think it also might just be coincidence. "Tamashii" is certainly a word in its own right. I think it more likely that the name is punning "yamato damashii" (大和魂, spirit of the Japanese). There's no reason there couldn't be multiple puns going on, however. - Exitmoose 18:00, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm extremely doubtful that either 玉 (dama) or 四囲 (shii) have any non coincidental connection to the title of the game. It seems to be a huge stretch, honestly. However, in trying to unearth the history of the name of the game, the best I've come up with is Takahashi dodging the question. Interviewer: "'Katamari Damashii is a good name for the game. How did you come up with it?" Takahashi: "It just popped into my head, suddenly, and that's what it's been from the beginning. It hasn't changed since then." [[2]] Ugh, really helpful, Takahashi... So where are we? Who really thinks this should be here given a total lack of substantiation? - Exitmoose 11:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to keep responding to myself. I reworked the "Name" section, creating a second paragraph for "alternative interpretations." This is both a more logical ordering, in my opinion, and allows the various opinions regarding the meaning of the name to be represented, while putting the direct translation in the spotlight. Seem good? - Exitmoose 12:15, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm more or less happy with the current version. The only thing that bugs me is that no reason is given for the odd transliteration for しい. Isn't -cy a bit unusual? It may be that it's not, or that it's not worth pointing out, but as an amateur linguist, I find it curious and interesting. Do you think the -cy was some sort of play on the English suffix (as in supremacy and such)? As is, I think the "Note:" is more confusing than informative or helpful. The transliteration doesn't seem to make much sense, but then that's sort of par for the course with this game. :) —HorsePunchKid→龜 19:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree. I think Occam's Razor comes into play here: there's no reason to assume there was anything but typical hamfisted Americanization of a video game going on when the spelling was chosen, unless further evidence to the contrary appears. I'm taking that bit off. --Darksasami 21:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Extra Katamari Links...

It's not really important for understanding the game but there are a few more links that might be appreciated by players of the game. Do these have any place in the article?

The Livejournal Community

The scoreboard discussion group

The RUP Parody page

The last one is more humorous than functional, and might be better included in the Real_Ultimate_Power article if at all.

Ayelis 08:30, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The AIDS Commercial

The article seems to imply that the commerical was inspired by KD, but is there any evidence to support that?

Somehow I really doubt it. - Exitmoose 15:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I will take the liberty to remove the reference for now, seeing how it probably is not "Katamari Inspired" as the section heading implies.


[edit] Only PS2?

Is this game (or others in the series) only available for PS2? Is there any reason why it isn't or won't be available on other platforms?--Sonjaaa 08:57, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is, and I don't know, ask Namco. --Golbez 14:56, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Coming soon is a version for the Playstation Portable called Me and My Katamari. Also, Nintendo has long listed a DS-version of KD, but that might end up being vaporware. — Oed 02:09, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Damashii vs Damacy

I don't understand why Damashii was romanized as Damacy? Does this also change the pronunciation in English? We should add info about this.--Sonjaaa 17:45, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe Namco just thought "Damacy" would look better to Americans, give it less of a Japanese feel and more of a "WTF" feel. --Golbez 22:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
This word is primarily sung as "Damacy" in the songs, rather than "Damashii". (Katamari on the Swing). Many of the songs contain a mishmash of English and Japanese and, for all I know, other languages. This seems to be consistent with the King of All Cosmos' penchant for polyglot absurdities. --Pontifex 19:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Er, it's only pronounced more like "Damacy" in We Love Katamari, which is long after this one came out. It's clearly "shii" in this one. The reason they went with -cy is unknown, but it is a valid romanization of "shii". Since then, many people have pronounced it slightly differently than it ought to be, I think (damasii instead of damashii), so for the sequel they pronounced it in a slightly different way as well. "Damasii" is a valid pronunceation for the name, after all, it's just a slightly uncommon one (I think a particular Japanese dialect has a bigger tendancy to pronounce "shi" as "si", but I'm not sure which one, if truly any)...
The songs have lots of English mishmashed in with the Japanese, but this isn't uncommon for Japanese songs. English is cool, or something, and in addition to that, many English words are a part of the Japanese language now in the form of Katakana words... So it's only natural to have lots of English. In the English release of this game, the King rarely uses other languages aside from the word "katamari", although he does practice Esperanto in the sequel. -JC 01:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flash game

The section that reads:

Namco itself has also added a Macromedia Flash mini-game on their official Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy website.

now features a broken link. I was going to delete the link, but I don't want to if someone else can look up a mirror or the relocated file. --Rocketgoat 01:55, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I added "The game has since then been taken down or moved." after the links.

Does anyone know of a mirror or someone with a copy of the .swf?

I was looking around and found this mirror: http://members.cox.net/az0madman/katamari.swf --Rocketgoat 23:56, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unofficial Message Board

I hope it's alright that I added links to an unofficial katamari message board in the External Links for all three katamari games. 216.188.214.202 23:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Katamari = 'Warring States' Bead?

Does anyone know if there was any influence on the design of the katamari itself being based upon Chinese "warring state" beads? They look amazingly similar. Examples: 1,2,3. If not, anyone know where the design came from? I can't seem to find out, and I think it would make an interesting addition to the article. --Eris Siva 08:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gameplay -difficult to read

I haven't played the game, and I find this article almost impossible to read. It must be possible to start give a somewhat short description of the gameplay early in the article.

The section named gameplay contains description of what the game is not. I would rather have read a desciption of what the game is.

Agreed; that section's quite badly scattered, and the definitions of what the game is not seem unhelpfully selective (there are a thousand racing games where "it is possible to do very poorly on a mission or to run out of time" without getting a 'game over' message, and hundreds of puzzle games with arbitrary plots and game worlds tacked onto them). I've shuffled things and cut it back. --McGeddon 09:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
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