If you're looking for an answer to that, just try Googling "Katamari Wii" and you'll get plenty of answers, all different. Apparently, online retailers seem to believe that the latest installment of the game, Beautiful Katamari, will be coming to the Wii, since they have already added product pages for the game. For instance, if you look for Beautiful Katamari on Amazon,
you'll find that they list the game coming out for Wii on Nov. 1. Other sites also list a Katamari game for Wii, but the release dates differ widely. Some say the game will be out as early as Oct. 24 this year, while Buy.com is saying it will be out Nov. 14 -- of 2008! Despite the disparity, one encouraging clue that there actually may be something to this is that all of the retailers seem to agree the price of Beautiful Katamari for the Wii will be $29.99, which is $10 cheaper than the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.
Still, there is more confusion than information. If you look around at some of the gaming news and reviews sites, some say it is coming out only for PS3 and Xbox 360, others say it is rumored to be coming out for Wii and still others say it has already been confirmed.
It's enough to drive me CRAZY! Come on, Namco, just give us the word, one way or the other. Please! I need closure on this.
Ummm ... yeah. I guess it's safe to assume that I am a huge Katamari Damacy fan. In fact, I would rank the Katamari series up there among my three favorite games of all time, with the other two being the Civilization computer games and the old text-based Zork games on the Commodore 64.
If you've never played or seen the Katamari games, it's a bit hard to explain the fierce loyalty they inspire, because about the only way to describe the games is that they're about rolling stuff up in a ball. That's it. You have this sticky ball that you roll around, and the stuff you roll over sticks to it. The whole object is to roll over enough stuff that you reach a predetermined size before time runs out. Add to this extremely cheesy graphics, dialogue and soundtrack, and you have one of the hottest-selling games of all time. It sounds weird and dumb, and unless you actually play it, it's hard to understand the appeal. But it's just one of those extremely simple but addictive games like Tetris that inspires players to waste away entire days playing.
Hopefully, we'll find out one way or another before long. In the meantime, if you're a Wii owner suffering from Katamari withdrawl, I would suggest checking out Elebits. On the surface, it's almost nothing like Katamari Damacy, but it does share some of the same addictive elements, such as performing a seemingly simple task (finding x-number of the Elebits creatures hiding in a room) within a certain amount of time. Plus, it's just fun when you get to the point where you're throwing furniture all around the room at a breakneck pace, trying to beat the clock. Someday soon, I'll have to post a full review of the game, but it's been a few months since I've played.
1 comment:
To be honest, I had never heard of the game but this post peaked my interest so I decided to do a little research myself. Like my brother, I was unable to find anything definitive. However, I did find references to comments made by the game's director Jun Moriwaki which goes as follows:
"The Wii is also one of our platform choices. We would like to challenge with different interfaces such as the keyboard on a PC, or the touch pad on the DS. However, the controller for Wii is quite unique so being able to overcome the different issues will be the key."
Additionally, I also read the company's press release on the matter in which they do confirm the release for PS3 and XBOX 360 but they completely avoided addressing the issue of adapting it for the Wii. Here is a link to their press release which was released April 20th: http://www.namcobandaigames.com/news/press/press/207/page/1
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