Katamari

Two winters ago, when I was in Taipei, my brother bought a game called "Katamari Damashi" which was only available for the Japanese PS2 at that point.

Basically, the goal of the game is to roll a ball around and pick up objects to make the ball bigger. Only objects which are smaller than the ball can be picked up, but as the ball grows, you can pick up larger and larger objects, until you can pick up people and cars and buildings. It sounds like a silly game but is actually horribly addictive.

Anyway, my cousin, my sister and I spent about 8 hours one night and finally beat all of the levels. We had to take turns because we found it was possible to get motion sickness from playing for too long, and because our hands started to cramp up.

Why am I writing about this now?

Last weekend, I was at a wedding, and as the groomsmen were walking down the aisle, I heard some strangely familiar music. It only took me about a minute to realize that it was the theme to one of the early Katamari levels. I think about 20-25% of the audience recognized the music, and perked up. The other 75-80% were probably wondering what was with the tinkly video game music.

Then, this morning, as I was walking through the parking lot at work, I saw a license plate reading KATMARI, with a holder entitled "THIS IS HOW I ROLL". This is probably less funny to other people, but I was very amused.