It’s not a feeling inspired by playing his games. Katamari was great, Noby Noby Boy, also great. It’s based more on what the guy says. Here he is chatting with Gamasutra, who ask him whether his current work designing playgrounds is a reaction to the fact he’s over the corporate machinations of the gaming business.

“I think that’s true,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been feeling for a few years now that I’m just not suited to the games industry. Yeah, that’s certainly been an impetus for working on the playground. You’re right.”

You know what, he may be right. And before you complain, remember, if you truly love them, you have to let them go…

Interview: The Melancholy Of Keita Takahashi [Gamasutra]

Talking with game site Develop, Takahashi explains, “I had this idea for an FPS where the player’s character grows in size, gets bigger and bigger as the game progresses. But as you get bigger some weapons are too small to use, so you have to improvise; maybe throw airplanes at the enemies. That sort of stuff.
So I have this idea of making a fun and unique FPS, with the right team it would be a good FPS.”

Even if it wasn’t a very good FPS, it would sure be something.

Interview: Keita Takahashi [Develop] [Pic]

According to game site GameSetWatch, UK gaming even GameCity and the Nottingham City Council have announced that Takahashi will design a children’s playground for Nottingham City at Woodthorpe Grange Park.

Takahashi is currently spending a month in the area and talking to children and locals as well as the City Council landscape architect. Back in 2006, Takahashi expressed interest in a playground “that’s soft, and with lots of big blocky shapes, and a place [kids] can’t really get hurt – very colourful – where kids can roll around and be free. But it’s probably okay if they occasionally get hurt too.”

Councillor David Trimbl says, “We’re delighted to have Takahashi-san on board and very much looking forward to working with him on this unique collaboration.”

Takahashi Designing Children’s Playground In Nottingham [GameSetWatch]

The game may have been more appropriately titled in Japan, where it’s known as Katamari Tribute. The PS3 version borrows liberally from previous levels in the Katamari series, recycling levels, objectives and characters from the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 entries. In Katamari Forever, the Prince and his cousins must obey the orders of two royals, the amnestic King of All Cosmos, suffering from a bump on the noggin, and the machine built to act in his stead, the RoboKing.

Is another spin around the katamari worth rolling up into your life?

Loved
Look, It’s Katamari: It may be hard to imagine that a game this quirky, this visually distinct—partly thanks to four graphic filters—could feel old hat, but the Katamari Damacy series is in danger of wearing out its welcome. Fortunately, the act of piling on thousands of objects onto one’s katamari, marveling at its increasing size, still somehow manages to remain incredibly fun, even if this is your third, fourth or fifth go. The gameplay hasn’t changed at all, save for the addition of some new abilities, like the Prince’s hop that makes overcoming obstacles much easier.

♥ ♥ ♥: The only other new addition to the Katamari formula are the King’s and RoboKing’s hearts, power-ups that cause the katamari ball to vacuum up everything (of the right size) within a certain radius. It’s an exciting, albeit minor, bonus that adds a bit more strategy to one’s katamari run.

Beautiful Katamari: The game looks incredibly sharp on the PlayStation 3 running at 1080p and with a suite of visual styles that give the game a pencil-sketched look, a sepia toned filter and, later, classic Katamari Damacy graphics. Many of the game’s objects are low poly by design, but everything looks great up close and zoomed out.

Hated
Technical Quirks Forever: Graphically, the game is impressive, with one exception: the frame rate still comes to crawl when your katamari gets big enough, making Katamari Forever feel just as sluggish as its forebears at times. Camera problems still abound, particularly in enclosed spaces.

Me & My Least favourite Levels: The rehashing of so much of Katamari’s older content inevitably means some of the least enjoyable variations on the formula will also return. Building the biggest katamari possible is great fun—and that shouldn’t be the entirety of the game—but some of the tasks, such as building a katamari on a budget and raising the temperature of the katamari by avoiding “cold” items can just be frustrating.

No Online Multiplayer: Want to roll up some Katamaris with a friend? Or an enemy? You’ll have to do it locally, as the game offers offline co-op and versus modes only. They’re fine additions, but Namco Bandai’s rolling backwards.

Enough, Jumboman: The cut scenes, once quirky and uniquely entertaining, may have worn out their welcome more so than anything else. Now they just feel obligatory, as do some of the preambles from the King and RoboKing.

Late in the game, in the middle of a level, the King of All Cosmos (or was it the RoboKing?) says something to the effect of “This is Katamari Damacy. Nothing more, nothing less.” It’s an accurate description of what Katamari Forever has to offer. It’s a trip down memory lane, literally for the King, but one that manages to still be highly entertaining, if only to see just how big one can manage to make that katamari in 12 minutes.

Should you have never played a Katamari Damacy game before, by all means, get the PlayStation 3 version. It’s wonderfully fun. If you’ve played more than one Katamari Damacy game, however, it might be worth carefully considering just how interested you might be in reinvesting your time, because there’s little new in this unusually expensive package.

Katamari Forever was developed and published by Namco Bandai for the PlayStation 3, released on September 22 in North America. Retails for $US49.99. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through all levels, tested co-op and versus modes.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Microsoft let reporters such as our own Brian Crecente play Namco’s famous stuff-rolling game, Katamari Damacy, using the company’s prototype hands-free control system, Project Natal. But Destructoid’s Nick Chester is the reporter who I caught in the act.

While in the US, Tsunoda showed off the controller-free motion controller with the help of a 3D brick breaking title and a build of Burnout, in Japan they brought along copies of Katamari Damacy and Space Invaders Extreme to show off to the press, developers and publishers.

Tsunoda, dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans and trademark oversized sunglasses, first walked a small gathering of press through the concept of the project.

The device, which uses a camera and infra-red sensor, not only detects movement, but the person playing a game, he pointed out.

To prove his point Tsunoda, who has long hair, had one of the press try their hand at the breakout game. When the writer started playing the transparent icon on screen changed both the hair and body type to more closely match the player.

Tsunoda said that the device doesn’t require a special background or lighting to play, despite the fact that the game was set up in a well-lite, almost completely white room. In fact, he said, because it makes use of an infra-red sensor, a person could play a Project Natal game in total darkness.

Because Microsoft is meeting with Japanese publishers and developers, Tsunoda said they worked up prototype ports of Katamari Damacy and Space Invaders Extreme that would work with the controller-free controller. That doesn’t mean, he added, that those games will ever see an official release date.

In Katamari Damacy a player holds their hands out in front of them and slides them through the air in the direction they want the growing ball to move. A player holds their hands straight up in the air to shift the camera to the other side of the ball and starting moving in that direction.

Playing around with the game for a few minutes I was impressed with how responsive the controls seemed to be, allowing me to move around moving objects fairly deftly and pick up only the items I wanted to with the ball. It was a fun way to play an already fun game. One that would inevitably expand the potential audience for the game.

Next up, Tsunoda started up Space Invaders Extreme. In the Project Natal version of Space Invaders you have to shuffle side-to-side to move the defending space ship across the bottom of the screen. To shoot you raise both hands in the air. You can either hold your hands in the air, making the ship fire as if you were holding the button in, or raise your hands and drop them as if you were tapping the fire button.

The game, with its more immersive play and increased physicality, was a delight to play. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love Space Invaders, and this was a welcome addition to the already prevalent franchise.

The team on Project Natal have been busy porting lots of games over to the new control system, but not to release them. Instead, I was told, they’re doing it to see how the controls translate and if it helps or hinders game play.

This seems like a great way to point point the strengths and weaknesses of a new type of controller. Hopefully, that will mean that when the device comes out less games will have this type of control slapped on and gamers will instead be able to choose from a more substantive selection of games with controls that make sense.

1up’s David Ellis put in a heroic effort in last week’s Listen Up podcast to describe the game Osmos. He was describing the game that I voted as best entry in this spring’s Independent Games Festival (it didn’t win.) And I pitied his attempts to describe it to his co-workers.

A little set-up, not that I think I can do much better than Ellis.

Osmos is a 2D PC puzzle game played from the overhead view that makes you think of flOw or the cell stage in Spore. You control one globule – or mote, in Ellis’ descriptions—with the goal of moving that globule into contact with smaller globules, automatically absorbing them and eventually being the largest globule in the playing field. Two complications: 1) If you go near larger globules in the playing field, they will siphon off your size, making you shrink as they gain size… 2) You can only propel yourself by jetting some of your mass behind your globule, shrinking yourself in the process and injecting more globules into the playing field in the process (Imagine retreating from a larger globule but having to fire off some of your mass into that larger one to escape—thereby making it larger).

OK. If I haven’t lost you yet, then here’s Ellis trying to describe the game’s wonderful Milky-Way-galaxy-style level at 9:34 of the podcast:

David Ellis: There are other levels where you start in orbit around this sun and all the globules are like asteroids and planets and meteorites, also orbiting around the sun, and you actually have to adjust your orbit on the fly to avoid larger motes but also…

Garnett Lee, Listen Up host: So you already have momentum.

Ellis: You already have momentum. So you’re trying to actually adjust your orbital track while trying to catch up to other ones, but also not adjusting it in such a way that you lose your orbit, because then you’ll have to use a lot of the make-up of your character to actually get back into orbit. So you’ll actually be a lot smaller then. So you want to try to keep it pretty consistent all the way around. But you also want to adjust it so that you’re not just following in the same track but you are changing it every time around so you’re picking up more and more motes to make yourself much larger.

Don’t blame the messenger. Blame the complexity of even the simplest games. I’ve told people that the breakthrough of Osmos is that it tweaks the design fundamentals of Katamari Damacy. That game is all about gaining mass in order to absorb whatever is, at the moment, smaller. That dynamic is here, but coupled with the stress that larger things in the level are always a threat to roll you up. It’s like a Katamari MMO, except that it’s single-player.

Does that make sense?

Maybe you should just watch the trailer and try the demo from Hemisphere Games.

08-28-2009 Listen Up Podcast

Osmos Trailer from hemisphere games on Vimeo.

So what better way to celebrate the season of weddings than with a quick look at some of the best wedding dresses shown off in video games? A lot of video game characters we know and love have walked down the aisle over the years. Ken got married at the end of Street Fighter II, the entire plot of Dragon Quest V centres around a bride and it looks like Aya’s getting down to marital business in the upcoming Parasite Eve: The 3rd Birthday.

But when it comes to that most important of wedding props — the dress — only a few video game characters and even fewer gamers really get it right. Here are a few fashionable examples:

Princess Peach, Super Paper Mario
Peach almost exchanged vows with Bowser at the beginning of the game, but even though the arranged marriage goes bust before the I dos, Peach is rocking that puff sleeved gown with the opera gloves. Observe how the pink ribbon on the bouquet accents the gem in her crown, too. Classy.

Meryl Silverburgh, Metal Gear Solid 4
The cool thing about Meryl’s dress is the story behind it. I fangirl’d out over speaking with Hideo Kojima at the Game Developers Conferences this year to tell him how much I liked her dress. He replied through his translator that the animators didn’t really know what a Western-style wedding dress looked like, so they had an assistant go out and rent a dress to model for the animators. Good thing the assistant picked a sleeveless number — Meryl is way too ripped to pull off bell sleeves. And kudos on the tiara, but could we loose the gun?

Princess Ashe, Final Fantasy XII
With it’s ruffled train and extreme gold accessory count, this is a gown fit for a princess. Sadly, though, the veil doesn’t quite fit the dress. The length and tiered lace fringe work well, but the giant blue feathers on top and golden cheerios that seemed to be hot glued to the cap scream “I let my little sister decorate this.”

Princess Ashe, Final Fantasy XII
Here’s a veil-less breakdown.

Aidra the Katamari Bride, Real Life
Never mind the nerd factor, look at the detail on that dress in the vines and flower pattern. It’s delicate, pretty and perfectly coordinated to her headgear. Plus the dress can double as a prom gown thanks to the modest cut and straight fall, if the bride should choose to let her potential future daughter wear it.

There are probably more weddings and even more gowns in more games than I’ve played. Leave a comment if you spot any. And before you start in on me about the default gown in The Sims 2, I’m not a fan; the Sims don’t know how to accessorize.

As you can see below, the Katamari theme extended beyond just the bride and groom. The entire bridal party were decked out, there were Katamari invites, gifts, lamps, flower accessories, even an adorable little Katamari cake. To get an idea of the scope of the madness, check out this gallery.

Katamari Damacy wedding [Offbeat Bride, via The Epitome of Profundity]