Trivia / Katamari Damacy

• No Dub for You: The REROLL Enhanced Remake for the first game only has Japanese audio with subtitles and is missing the English dub from the original PS2 version.
• No Export for You: Europe didn't get Katamari Damacy until the release of REROLL 14 years later. Also nearly happened with the first game in the U.S., until an unexpectedly successful showing at E3 convinced the developers it was worth a shot.
• Permanent Placeholder: Yuu Miyake had a tendency to make scratch recordings of song ideas into a little voice recorder while he walked through the hallways at Namco, which became a well-known quirk. As a joke, he put one of these scratch recordings in as the title song on an early build, leading to the now-iconic "Na naaaa, nanana nana na na nana na nana naaa" opening.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A common rumor states that the reason why the series is so weird is because director Keita Takahashi hated video games and deliberately sought out to create an anti-game devoid of categorization as a form of Writer Revolt. The actual story is nowhere near as cynical: Takahashi was an art school graduate and was eager to explore the potential that games held as an artistic medium. His actual beef lies with the gaming industry and its practices, only directing We ♥ Katamari because he knew Namco would make it without his input if he let go of the reins.
• Referenced by...: A Robot Chicken sketch in which the Prince helps a family of three move into their new house by rolling all of the furniture and the family themselves into a Katamari, ignoring the parents' pleas for him to pack everything more carefully.
• Sleeper Hit: The first game, in the United States. When it already failed to meet expectations in its native country, it at first vindicated the skeptical executives at Namco, but the game managed to subvert those doubts when it was exported and became an unexpected phenomenon. It even crossed with a minor case of Demand Overload when retailers had too little stock to keep up with the demand due to their expectations it would become a Cult Classic at best.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The first game was originally going to revolve around the Queen of All Cosmos being kidnapped by some bad guys on Earth, and the King sending the Prince to retrieve her because he was too lazy to do it himself. To make up for his small size, the Prince would use his hammer-shaped head to knock out larger entities and take control of their bodies. The pill-shaped heads that most of the Cosmic family have are derived from this old concept.
  • Beautiful Katamari was originally planned as a multiplatform release, with versions for the Wii and PS3 as well as the Xbox 360. However, ultimately only the Xbox 360 version was made.
• Writer Revolt: Keita Takahashi, the series creator, didn't want to continue the series after the first game, but Namco had other ideas. Considering We ♥ Katamari, the only other Katamari game he was involved (which he only worked on because Namco was going ahead with the game either with or without him) and the direct sequel to Katamari Damacy, revolved around the King and Prince directly taking requests to pander to the fans, one could possibly interpret it as this trope.

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