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Bandai Namco will add a new Katamari Damacy toy to its crane games in Japan starting on April 24, 2025. You can get a giant doll of the titular Katamari, along with a little Prince pushing it attached to the side.

The total size of the Katamari crane game toy is around 27 centimeters. Nothing is sticking to it, as if the Prince just started a level, and there’s a rainbow pattern on it that makes it look like the package of the game. This toy is part of the Mechamofugutto line of plushes from Banpresto. Dolls from it include the Haro from Gundam GQuuuuuuX and a Pikachu from PokePeace. They’re large, soft plushes that just entice you to hug them.

Here's a closer look at the item:

Katamari first came out in 2004 with Katamari Damacy. They’re puzzle-action games in which you control The Prince, who helps his father, the King of All Cosmos, re-create the stars and planets by rolling up objects using the Katamari ball. You must get the ball to a certain size within a timeframe, and other puzzles might introduce limits or rules, such as avoiding specific objects.

The Katamari toy will appear in Bandai Namco's Bandai Spirits crane game machines around Japan from April 24, 2025. Katamari Damacy Rolling Live, the latest entry in the long-running series, is an Apple Arcade exclusive, and it came out on April 3, 2025.

The post Katamari Damacy Toy Will Roll Into Crane Games appeared first on Siliconera.

The Katamari Damacy game series reached its 21st anniversary on March 18, 2025. Bandai Namco celebrated the occasion by revealing numerous new plushies that will appear in April 2025.

The first ones revealed are Nuigurumi Keyholders—better described in English as plush keychains—of the Prince and two of his cousins: Miso and Ichigo. Prices for these items will range from 1,760 yen (~$11.85) to 1,925 yen (~$12.95). Pre-orders are available at Natalie Store, which also s international shipping via the WorldShopping widget.

The next item revealed is a large plush featuring the titular Katamari ball, which will have a size of around 27 cm (~10.63 inches). Bandai Namco will release this plush as a crane game prize via the Banpresto brand.

In addition, Bandai announced that it is working on Narabundesu capsule toy figures that will feature the Prince along with Miso, Ichigo, Opeo, and Huey. The five figures will be available via Gashapon vending machines across Japan in April 2025.

The new plushies are not the only things Bandai Namco revealed in its press release. The company also announced that it is working with Village Vanguard to restock the merchandise revealed around the 2025 New Year holidays. The pre-order window for the new batch will open on March 19-30, 2025. The newly revealed Apple Arcade game, Katamari Rolling Live, is also part of the series' 21st-anniversary celebrations.

Katamari Damacy originally appeared for PlayStation 2 in Japan on March 18, 2004. Bandai Namco has since released Reroll remasters of the game and its 2005 sequel We Love Katamari for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The post Katamari Damacy 21st Birthday Celebrated With New Plushies appeared first on Siliconera.

The Katamari Damacy 20th anniversary falls on March 18, 2024, and Bandai Namco has prepared numerous pieces of merchandise and new music on a soundtrack plans to celebrate it. The company will gradually release physical goods and digital soundtracks related to the Katamari clump-rolling game series. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]

Bandai Namco has first released a "KatamaRespect Remix" EP album featuring covers of Katamari Damacy series songs by Den-On-Bu characters, and this album is immediately available on multiple online music platforms, including Spotify and YouTube Music. The company will also release a Katamari Damacy original soundtrack on the same digital platforms in late March 2024.

Bandai Namco also revealed that it is working with multiple companies to release new Katamari merchandise. Torch Torch has opened orders for caps priced at 4,950 yen (~$33) and hoodies at 12,100 yen (~$81). Cake.jp is also selling cake jars featuring Katamari Damacy characters for 1,200 yen (~$8) individually until June 2, 2024.

Meanwhile, Animate will sell acrylic stands featuring all characters who appeared in the 2009 PS3 entry Katamari Forever from April 18, 2024, until May 20, 2024. Space A la mode will also release keychains of the Prince and other popular cousins in July 2024.

The first Katamari Damacy game came out for PlayStation 2 in Japan on March 18, 2004. Prior to the 20th anniversary, Bandai Namco released the game's remaster, Katamari Damacy Reroll, for Nintendo Switch and PC in 2018, as well as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2020. Another remaster for the 2005 sequel, We Love Katamari, is also available since mid-2023 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in addition to the aforementioned platforms.

The post Katamari Damacy 20th Anniversary Brings New Merchandise and Music appeared first on Siliconera.

The Japanese title, Katamari Tribute, is a more fitting name since this game is mostly a pretty rehash of past Katamari games. But, even if Namco Bandai made every map from scratch would Katamari Forever be that different from all of the other Katamari titles?

Graphically, yes. Katamari Forever has a set of sharp visual filters that render the world with cel-shading or a touch of wood grain. The levels from past games, which take place in the King of All Cosmos’ mind, start out in black and white too. As you roll up paper clips and people, the world gains color and the King’s memory comes back.

Old levels like the Gingerbread stage from We Love Katamari have hearts to grab. Pick one of these up and your katamari temporarily becomes a junk magnet while the Prince’s cousins dance on screen. Another tweak allows the Prince to hop by flicking the controller (sounds like a good idea, but doesn’t work well in practice) or with the R2 button. Jumping changes the past levels a bit, mostly by making them easier since stairs aren’t an obstacle anymore.

Otherwise, Katamari Forever follows the same formula and goals as the other Katamari games. Maybe, a little too closely. You collect junk with a small-to-giant sticky ball by directing it with two analog sticks. Many of Katamari Forever’s memorable challenges such as the level where you roll up food to grab a sumo wrestler are from other games. The game’s most innovative stage has players soak a katamari with water and roll over a desert to vegetate it. Seeing the barren land turn into a lush garden is a sweet sight. This level also introduces a new gameplay mechanic, rolling into puddles to refill a katamari’s water supply.

But, that’s only one level in a game with around thirty stages.

Namco Bandai focused more on increasing the amount of content in Katamari Forever, recycled or not, than anything else. Katamari Forever has more cousins, more presents, more junk, and tacked on cutscenes with Jumboman that aren’t amusing. Part of Katamari Damacy’s charm was its weird world and catchy soundtrack, two elements Katamari Forever retains. Katamari Damacy was also a hit because it was cheap and different, two things Katamari Forever isn’t.

Newcomers will have a lot of fun with Katamari Forever since it’s just as accessible as any of the other Katamari games. Long time fans will probably be the most critical of Katamari Forever since it’s really a repackaged, remastered, best of Katamari disc. Next time around I hope Namco Bandai will evolve the series beyond the hyper speed Katamari Drive mode introduced in Katamari Forever.

Here are three quick ideas I came up with.

Katamari Bullet Hell – Imagine a shmup where you can bend time (for a short while, in rechargeable bursts), roll up bullets into a katamari, and throw them back. On second thought, this will never sell.

Retro Katamari – Namco Bandai sort of did this with Me & My Katamari, but it would be neat to see an 8-bit style Katamari / platformer hybrid.

Run! It’s a Katamari – Katamari Forever doesn’t have online multiplayer, even though its Xbox 360 predecessor Beautiful Katamari does. Bummer, but Beautiful Katamari’s online mode is the from We Love Katamari. Perhaps, Namco Bandai can innovate here with a new game that has one player rolling a katamari while three (maybe more?) other players try to escape a sticky situation. Players that get caught would respawn and the game would keep going until time runs out. Namco Bandai could add options that change the katamari starting size so large players can block the katamari from growing and the type of runner (people, Mogran, unicorns, etc.).

The post Katamari Forever: A Roll Down Memory Lane appeared first on Siliconera.

What number did you get? Did you win?

We came up with 25 cousins, including the Prince. Since some people didn’t consider the Prince a cousin, we accepted 24 and 25 as correct answers.

So, did you win? You did if you are one of these three!

Grand Prize – A. Arthur
First Prize – T. Couhig, JSRV

Congrats to all of the winners and thanks for entering!

The post Katamari Forever Contest: Winners Tallied! appeared first on Siliconera.

Can you count? Then you could win Katamari Forever!

We’re giving away three copies of Katamari Forever and the soundtrack, provided by Namco Bandai. To enter our contest count the number of cousins in the picture. Then send an e-mail to siliconera@(removethisspamguard!)gmail.com with “Katamari Forever contest” as the subject and the number of cousins you think there are in the e-mail.

The first person who gets the correct number wins Katamari Forever and the soundtrack. Two other winners, selected randomly from the pool of correct answers, will win Katamari Forever. The contest is open to US residents from now until Friday @ 11:59PM PST, but get your answers in quick. Good luck everyone!

Grand Prize: Katamari Forever for the PlayStation 3 and a soundtrack.

First Prize (2): Katamari Forever for the PlayStation 3.

The post Katamari Forever Contest: Count And Win! appeared first on Siliconera.

Katamari Forever comes out next week in Japan and as a last minute news bit Namco Bandai announced it s Home Rewards. In addition to collecting trophies, you can unlock the Prince and his cousins as Home Rewards items.

The tiny Prince sits on your shoulder like a parrot, eagerly waiting to roll your virtual furniture into a katamari when you're not looking.

Katamari Forever also contains a compilation of credit roll games, retro style Katamari mini-games. There's a new credit game made for Katamari Forever and a game for We Love Katamari, where you play as the King of All Cosmos. Wait, was that in the original PS2 release?

The post Katamari Forever Brings The Prince To PlayStation Home appeared first on Siliconera.

Katamari Forever (aka Katamari Damacy Tribute) is almost done. Namco Bandai will release the first Katamari game for the PlayStation 3 in Japan only July 23. The release date comes with a few tidbits, like the 100+ cousin count.

Retailer Rakuten says there are over 100 playable characters and over 30 stages. Levels that take place in the King's Memory have King Shock spots. Touch one of these to make your Katamari grab nearby objects like a magnet. King Shock spots also make the cousins celebrate by dancing as seen in the screenshot.

The game will have four play modes: New Katamari Damacy (which has Sixaxis jumping), Katamari Drive (short play), Usual Katamari Damacy mode (classic), and Endless. Also like the other Katamari titles, you play a mini-game where you fail a stage in Katamari Forever.

The post Katamari Forever And 100+ Cousins Come To The PS3 In July appeared first on Siliconera.

Katamari Tribute will come out in North America this fall under the name Katamari Forever. The "tribute" part in the Japanese title is appropriate since Katamari Forever takes levels from the previous games and remixes them.

Old levels take place in the King of All Cosmos' mind and lack color. You see, the King knocked his noggin and has amnesia. When you roll up junk color comes back to the world and the King's memory recovers a bit. One of the old levels I saw was the gingerbread house stage from We Love Katamari. The stage looks better in 1080p, of course, and the visual filters like wood are especially cool, but what else is there? Truly devoted collectors will find items floating in the sky. Using the Prince Hop you can make the Katamari jump by flicking the controller up or hitting a shoulder button. Another feature is temporarily called a King Shock. Touch one a broken heart and the Katamari sucks up objects near by as if it was a junk magnet.

New stages take place in the present where RoboKing, a robotic version of the King of All Cosmos created by the cousins, goes bonkers and destroys all of the stars. Yes, you have to make all of the stars again. Instead of only rolling up junk one new level has players terraform a desert to a forest. Players start this stage by soaking their Katamari in water. Once the ball is wet you roll over sand and plants sprout, sort of like Katamari meets Flower. While rolling you lose water which means you have to return to a pond to refill your Katamari.

Katamari Forever has "more than 30 levels" and as of now there are no plans for able content. Katamari Forever doesn't have the online multiplayer introduced in Beautiful Katamari either. It does have offline multiplayer, online leaderboards, and new cousins to collect.

The post Katamari Forever Is A Blend Of Old And New appeared first on Siliconera.

Tired of Katamari Damacy's blocky look? Katamari Damacy Tribute lets players alter the presentation with visual filters. You can collect Earth's junk with cel-shaded, colored pencil or wood grain graphics. The PS3 game also s full 1080p so you can clearly see the faces of all the cows before you roll them into a star.

Namco Bandai will release Katamari Damacy Tribute in Japan sometime this year. An international release has not been announced at this time.

Classic

Colored Pencil

Wood Grain

Cel-shaded

The post Filters Give Katamari Damacy Tribute A New Visual Style appeared first on Siliconera.

Namco Bandai's DSiWare Katamari game is a distant cousin of the series. Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy has players align bricks and junk by dragging pieces carried by the Prince's cousins. Fill a row with purple bricks and they vanish, just like Tetris, but the goal of Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy isn't to make lines. You want the pint sized Prince to do what he does best, roll stuff up and make stars.

Occasionally, the cousins carry a Katamari ball. Set this to make the Prince appear and roll his Katamari in the direction of the arrow. If a block isn't underneath him he falls after he grabs the object. In the above picture the Prince will grab all of the sweets. Any blocks ed by junk also fall and disappear if they form a full line. Junk can't be cleared unless the Prince collects it or you have a special item. Roll on top of a present and you could get a star which erases one class of junk (all of the strawberries, for example) or the Queen who blows away a few of the top rows.

As you amass more objects the Katamari grows, sort of. Other than a meter on the left screen, a larger Katamari is illustrated by larger objects replacing tiny ones. Candy turns into office supplies which turn into animals, then people, cows, houses, whales/replicas of Tokyo Tower, and at the end you're rolling up planets. That is until you the planet stage and the loop rewinds. No matter which stage you're in Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy only has three types of things for the Prince to snag. In endless mode the cycle continues unless you're out of space and a block or piece of junk touches the top line.

Challenge mode is like a brainteaser. The King of All Cosmos sets requirements such as collecting 19 cows in 45 seconds and gives you a partially filled grid to work with. With an extremely limited amount of time, usually less than two minutes, you need to fulfill his request. While you start each challenge with the same grid, luck can affect challenge mode. In most of the challenges the cousins give players random blocks. Beating a challenge unlocks more difficult challenges until you get all of them.

Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy sounds a lot like Tetris, but you don't want to stack blocks as if you were playing Tetris. The trick to this game is doing the opposite of what you would do in Tetris. You want create a maze for the Prince by lining up alternating rows of junk and blocks with a single gap for him to fall through. Use this strategy and you can rack up points while the Prince follows the snake-like trail of garbage. Being counterintuitive makes Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy kind of clever and at the very least different from the myriad of other block dropping games.

Food for thought:

1.) This game is really a reskin of Pac-Attack, a Super Nintendo puzzle game Namco released back in the 90s, with a few tweaks. The copyright on the title screen even says 1990-2009. Katamari Damacy didn't exist in 1990.

2.) Namco Bandai licensed Vocaloid star Hatsune Miku, a face for a voice synthesizer program, to "sing" the game's closing song. Instead of spending money on this Namco Bandai should have made original music for Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy. Aside from the Hatsune Miku song the main songs, the ones you hear when playing the game, are downsampled music from past Katamari games.

The post Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy: Clutter And Roll appeared first on Siliconera.

Famitsu reported the PS3 Katamari game, Katamari Damacy Tribute, has a new visual presentation. This could have been a reference to the full HD 1080p resolution, but it isn't. Katamari Damacy Tribute will have cel-shaded graphics instead of blocky polygons.

Katamari Damacy Tribute also has PlayStation Network , but it is unclear what Namco Bandai plans to do with it. It could be for online play and/or distribution of able content.

The post Katamari Damacy Tribute Is Cel-Shaded For Your Enjoyment appeared first on Siliconera.

Later this year PlayStation 3 owners will gather clumps of junk in Katamari Damacy Tribute. As a series first, Katamari Damacy Tribute will be in full HD with 1080p resolution. The text says this Katamari game will have a new visual presentation, but the screenshots look like plain old Katamari.

The song list is also interesting since many of the tracks like Katamari on the Funk, Everlasting Love, and the Prince on the Moon are remixed songs from previous Katamari games. Could Katamari Damacy Tribute be a remix of past Katamari games?

The post Katamari Damacy Rolling Onto PS3 In Full HD appeared first on Siliconera.

The short story is Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy isn't like Katamari Damacy it all. As 1up pointed out it looks like Pac-Attack, but it isn't exactly Pac-Attack.

Pac-Attack has players drop blocks, stack up ghosts, and position Pac-Man pieces to eat the ghosts after they turn blue. You need to line up a few ghosts to get them to change color.

Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy does away with the color changing. You just need to align blocks and junk. When you place a katamari piece the Prince will roll in whatever direction the arrow points and follow a trail of stuff until he reaches the bottom. Square bricks fall to the ground after the Prince makes a star. If the falling blocks complete a horizontal line they vanish a la Tetris. New blocks held by the Katamari cousins appear on the right side of the touch screen. The cousins are slowly drawn to the black hole on the top of the screen so unlike Pac-Attack you get a couple of choices for your next block.

The able game has two modes Endless and Challenge where you need to make stars with a certain number or certain type of object. Namco Bandai will release this in Japan first for only 500 DSiWare Points ($5). Puzzle Katamari Damacy sounds like a shoe in game for the US DSiWare too.

The post How Katamari Works On DSiWare appeared first on Siliconera.

Namco Bandai. A able version of Mister Driller with a mission mode and time attack kicks off their DSiWare line up on February 25. The title is also a "" DSiWare game ringing in at 800 DSi Points ($8).

Next month Namco Bandai finally brings a Katamari game to the Nintendo DS. However, Koroga Puzzle Katamari barely resembles the grab everything with a giant sticky ball gameplay the Katamari series is known for. Korogashi Puzzle Katamari looks more like Tetris with a black hole that engulfs blocks and things. The Katamari spinoff is a bit cheaper than Mr. Driller too running at 500 DSiPoints ($5). It's nice to see Namco Bandai refresh the Katamari franchise. Also, it's nice to see at least one third party developer working on DSiWare games. Right now Nintendo is carrying the platform.

The post The First Third Party DSiWare Developer Is… appeared first on Siliconera.