PlayStation 2 #1: Katamari Damacy

Developer: Namco

Publisher: Namco

Release Date: 3-18-2004

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For as long as Japan had been a major player in the video game industry, there had been attempts to translate their unique sense of humor to American audiences. Many of these games are forgotten curios at best and insulting failures at worst. It's hard to play a game like Panic! and not feel some secondhand embarrassment for Japanese gamers. It's like if the Japanese only knew American humor from Friedberg and Seltzer parody films. You never want to be represented by the lowest of the cultural low. The problem with so many of these early attempts is that "wacky Japanese" was the entire game. Developers thought they could get by on mere curiosity. Luckily, Namco saw things differently. Namco, of course, made some of the greatest games of all time. They brought the world Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug just to name a few. In fact, my original goal for this blog was to rank all the Namco Museum games from the PlayStation series. That is yet another project I didn't quite finish, but Namco has still been all over my blog from the beginning. So, Namco was the prefect company to bring quirky Japanese humor into the mainstream. I suppose it might be a bit of a stretch to call Katamari Damacy mainstream, but it certainly graduated from cult classic status and spawned numerous sequels and remakes. It also spawned a whole slew of copycats, and much like Tetris many of the copycats are actually good. I don't know if there's a truer measure of success than inspiring good games. Of course, there is probably one more important reason that Katamari Damacy is successful. It is also a whole lot of fun.

Make no mistake, Katamari Damacy is funny and weird. You can't write about this game without talking about how strange it is. Katamari Damacy is also proudly Japanese. Most of the levels take place in Japanese houses and streets full of local products and objects. They didn't even change the Japanese name. However, if everything in the game was sanded down smooth, and the game was played with circles and blobs it would still be fun. This is thanks to the simple yet addictive goal. You start with something tiny and try to make something huge. In this case you are the Prince of All Cosmos tasked by your father to remake stars. You do so by rolling your sphere, the Katamari of the title, over anything you can find. Any object smaller than your Katamari will stick to it while anything larger will either harmlessly stay put or, in the case of a moving target, knock objects off. Levels will usually have a certain size goal to reach within a time limit, so you spend your time rolling around and getting bigger and bigger. In the beginning you're collecting thumbtacks and mahjong tiles, but by the end you're collecting whole continents. 

It sounds almost too simple, but it's oddly addictive. There's just something about watching your sphere grow. The goals are modest in the beginning, but each level gets bigger. The main challenge comes in finding a logical path through the levels. If you are not careful you can end up in a dead zone without much to pick up. It's also extremely satisfying when a large object you've had your eye on finally becomes collectable. And the levels are absolutely filled with all manner of items to pick up including animals and people. Katamari Damacy manages to keep its light tone even while sending droves of people into the cold vacuum of space to become stars. Of course, much of the humor comes from how oblivious the rest of the world is to what is happening. After the final level there's not much left in the world besides oceans but still nobody seems to care much. It still manages to stay light and fun, and the always increasing growth meant that I never felt like a level was hopeless. I may only be at about 50% with a couple minutes to go, but there's still a chance that I'm going to be picking up skyscrapers. This is gameplay designed by arcade experts. 

Of course, all this rolling can get a bit repetitive. It can be a little tricky when a game only has one goal, but it is still set up in a traditional, level-based way. The classic arcade days were long gone by this point, so it couldn't be a game where you just made a bigger and bigger ball until you died. They try to balance it out by also including levels with different goals. In some you have to roll up specific objects. In others you have to find the largest of a specific object. This is good in theory, but these levels can't actually be lost. Can't lose levels are one of my least favorite video game features. It feels meaningless when the stakes are so low. They could've easily put minimums in these levels and improved things significantly. This also makes Katamari Damacy a very short game, especially by PS2 standards. It can easily be finished in 2-3 hours, and that's a bit brief for a full-priced 21st century game. Of course, you can go back and play the levels again, and you will probably want to for at least some of them, but it's still a bit on the short side. My completion rate for PlayStation 2 is terrible though, so it's nice having some games that are fun and relatively short.  

I'm not going to complain too much, however, because it is an entertaining game from start to finish. It is a fun game that is boosted by the presentation. For once, the developers were trying to be funny, and it actually worked. The King of All Cosmos can be dismissive and somewhat cruel to his son, but his dialogue is always funny. The character designs and rainbow motif are fun as well. I'm still singing the wonderfully simple theme song to this day. There is also an oddly animated side story with a pair of kids worried about their astronaut father. In another game it would seem completely out of place, especially considering how fun the story already is. It's a welcome bit of weirdness though, and it makes the game feel even more complete. Is this actually a game about absentee parents disguised as a wacky arcade game? The mere fact that I'm even asking that question shows how well made this game is. Or maybe it just means that I take everything too seriously. Either way, it's a job well done. 

So, my journey into the PlayStation library is off to a good start. Since the first game I'm reviewing is good, I can only assume that all of the 1900 or so games I need to review will also be good. Anyone know if that's true or not? Katamari Damacy ranks all the way up at #25. That's just ahead of the NES version of Galaga, which is another Namco game. Honestly, I wasn't expecting it to rank quite so high. I guess I need to start ranking more of the heavy hitters, but I'm still having fun going slightly more obscure. There will probably be a day when Katamari Damacy isn't even in the top 100, especially if I get desperate for views and start writing about all the Mario and Zelda games. As far as cult classics go though, it's hard to do much better.

Atari Jaguar #8: Attack of the Mutant Penguins

Developer: Sunrise Games

Publisher: Atari

Release Date: March 15, 1996

How difficult were things getting for Atari in 1996? They released a game called Attack of the Mutant Penguins. Who wants to play a game called Attack of the Mutant Penguins? That name reeks of desperation. What they want you to think reading a name like that is “this is a fresh and wacky game full of ideas.” But what it actually says is “we wanted Lemmings but couldn’t get it.” I thought of Lemmings so much while I was playing that I just assumed Attack of the Mutant Penguins was an obscure DOS port. One of Atari's main goals was bringing PC games over to console, and I thought by this point they were looking for cheaper, lesser-known titles. But no, it was proposed to Atari after they opened up a European division to produce Jaguar games. Atari had all different companies submit games to them, and Attack of the Mutant Penguins is the one they liked. I would sure love to see some of the failed submissions, because it’s hard to see why Atari thought this was a good idea. The Jaguar was fading fast by this point, and what they saw in this confusing mess is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it sounded better on paper, or maybe Atari realized they couldn’t compete by making games like everyone else and decided to try to invent all new types of games. Well Attack of the Mutant Penguins was not going to come in at the last minute and save the day. I don’t think it’s going to appeal to anyone who doesn’t thirst for penguin blood. This might appeal to an orca, but it’s a hard sell to a human.

 

Attack of the Mutant Penguins is a frantic mess disguised as a Lemmings inspired action puzzle game. Lemmings really did try to do for action puzzlers what Tetris did for traditional puzzle games. A whole slew of games popped up in Lemmings’ wake trying to get a piece of that sweet action puzzle money. There were some successful games for PC, but consoles didn’t produce many popular follow-ups. Trying to come up with cute characters, challenging puzzles, and odd, sometimes violent humor wasn’t easy. And it sure wasn’t easy for the developers of Attack of the Mutant Penguins. Where most action puzzle games start you out small, Mutant Penguins plops you down in what feels like the midpoint of the level. Penguins are marching, little blue guys are bouncing around, there’s treasure chests but no keys, and you just know you’re going to have to do many things very quickly. Basically, it works like this: collect the blue guys, use the blue guys to open chests, find letters in the chests that spell out your weapon, hit enough smaller penguins to collect energy, and use your energy shot to destroy the mutant penguins before they tip the scale and outweigh the good penguins. Also, a lot of other things happen that make even less sense.

 

As you can probably tell, this game is frantic, and I wouldn’t call it frantic in a good way. It’s not an excitingly paced arcade game. It’s a game that is supposed to be about planning and puzzle solving. Those penguins just keep on marching, and I could see this as being a reverse-lemmings that is more about setting traps and disrupting progress. Instead, it’s a game where you just run as fast as you can and hope you find what you need while there’s still time. There’s no time to figure out what everything in the level even does, and it’s very easy to lose without knowing why. Really the whole game goes by without knowing why. I feel like you could play this whole game without explaining any particular action outside of penguin bludgeoning. Frantic is one thing, but Attack of the Mutant Penguins only takes a couple of minutes to become downright annoying. Chests will have items instead of letters in them which are no help at all because there’s not enough time to figure out what any of them do. There will be a set of good penguins to slow down the bad ones, but it’s hard to tell who's who, and they will often go through a zapper that turns them evil anyway. The evil penguins are mostly passive enemies, so the combat isn't even fun. You just stand there and kill them as they walk by. The game gives you clever clues at the beginning of levels just like in Lemmings, but I wasn’t able to get much help from them. The second level is called “A Little Ropey,” but I couldn’t find any use for that rope except to slow me down. “A little ropey” isn’t even a thing people say. Even the clues are random and confusing.

I gave this one my best attempt, but I couldn’t make it past the second level. I can’t tell you if the dynamic changes as you go along, but the basic goal seems to stay the same. There are action-based mini games between the levels which aren't that fun but are a nice change of pace. Also, there is a level select which I believe lets you play any levels you have already completed, so at least you don’t have to start from the beginning after every game over. Attack of the Mutant Penguins is certainly the type of game that only appeals to obsessives and collectors. It marks the beginning of the final wave of Jaguar games which are all rare and obscure. The prices have gone down somewhat in the last year or so, but a copy of this one can still run you about $90 loose. I would say that there are many better things to spend your money on, but of course I have a copy of Attack of the Mutant Penguins. I bought it many years ago, so it wasn't that expensive, but I get it. No judgement here. Just remember that it is as weird and pointless as the title makes it seem.

 

Ranking Jaguar games is getting a little tricky and not in the way I would like it to be. The bad games are starting to distinguish themselves so much that I really have to sort through the degrees of badness to make my decisions. Attack of the Mutant Penguins is not as offensively bad as the worst Jaguar games, but it's definitely a mile below something like Atari Karts that is boring but sensible as a game. Honestly, I think I'd even rather play Checkered Flag. That game is bad, but I knew I was I was doing and felt accomplished when it was finished. Attack of the Mutant Penguins just leaves me with an empty frustrated feeling. So, it's #6 of eight on my Jaguar list and overall, #137 on the complete list. It's right behind a couple of 2600 games, Pac-Man and Space Jockey, that I at least have some nostalgia for. I try not to rate games by nostalgia, but nobody's perfect. So, it's another loser on Jaguar. At least by the time it came out nobody had any expectations. Jaguar fans were probably playing the last few good releases and hoping that maybe the Jaguar 2 would become a real thing. It didn't of course, but Atari would find a strange new niche in a couple of years when greatest hits compilations would start to become popular on newer consoles. Atari would start to release new versions of old games which is something they would have quite a bit of success with. It didn't work on Jaguar, but the Atari name would be a mainstay on other contemporary consoles. Atari hasn't been a major cultural force since 1983, but I feel like they'll still be around even after cockroaches have died out. Who knows, maybe someday we'll see Revenge of the Mutant Penguins. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. 

Jaguar Quality Percentage: 1/8 or 12.5%

Atari Jaguar Rankings

1. Ruiner Pinball 

2. Cybermorph 

3. Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy 

4. Atari Karts 

5. Checkered Flag

6. Attack of the Mutant Penguins

7.   Club Drive 

8.   Fight for Life