Katamari Damacy Creepy Pasta

I hope someone can read this, for this is something people must know.

For starters, I’m Thomas, and I have a knack for bizarre games. Games that, at times, leaves you scratching your head in confusion. Games that, even if you try, you wouldn’t be able to make sense of it. Many people would cringe or dismiss these titles, but I find something in them… Captivating. For example: Total Distortion, Cho Aniki, to name a couple…

But lately, I found out about a new game to look out from the web-comic site Shifty Look: Katamari Damacy.

Seeing as it was mostly for Sony consoles, I decided to look around town for a copy of any game. Sadly, even if I went thought different stores, from GameStop to a shopping mall, and I couldn’t find any of the games, only random trendy games.

As I was about to give up hope and look it up on e-bay or something, I remembered that there’s an old local game shop I used to go when I was younger, around the time SNES was popular. And while it had rough times ever since the competition moved here a few years ago, they are still kicking.

Or at least, were.

When I reached the place, it looked shabbier than I remembered. Granted, last time I went there was when I was a kid, but with its current state, I wouldn’t be surprised the owners would sell the place and move on soon.

As I entered the building, I scanned through the shelves, seeing mostly handheld titles and a few current-gen (Or should I say last-gen…?) titles, but no sight of Katamari anywhere. That is until I saw a bargain bin with a lot of 6th gen titles, you know, PS2, GameCube and such.

I even saw a few games with black cases, as in, no cover art or anything. In the end, no Katamari.

I was about to give up hope, when I asked the clerk if there was any chance they had Katamari Damacy somewhere. He looked in his computer and, to my surprise, he said they did. He got out of his post, and searched the bargain bin for those blank cases, since they weren’t so many, he eventually found it. It had inside a disk with no art or anything; it was a regular disk with “Katamari Damacy” written with a black marker. Peculiar.

The clerk told me that a grown and pale woman sold the game last year, but because he was in a hurry at the moment, he didn’t test the game with the store’s PS2. And since they sold the PS2 to recover some funds months ago, there was no way to tell if it was the real deal or not.

Surprisingly, the clerk asked merely $10, as a way to not scam me in case it didn’t work. Very considerate, but then I had to either save the money and buy it online, or simply buy this cheap one.

Since I didn’t lose a lot of it, I choose to buy this one.

I happily returned back home, dusted off my PS2, checked if it worked, and inserted the disk into the console. And here’s where things turn weird…

As soon as I turned on the game, the PS2 started a low screeching noise, followed by a sudden black out. I still had my hands covering my ears before I realized I had to change the fuses. However, once I stepped out of my room, the lights turned on again, or should I say my bedroom’s lights turned on again, as the rest of the house was still dark.

My PS2 was like half a decade old, so I understand if it can’t perform as it did the first time I used it, but that noise was something I didn’t expect at all. Same with the odd behaviour of the light, since most of my house’s lights were turned on before the black out.

When I turned to open the PS2, I saw the Namco logo started disappearing, soon after it played the intro of the game. Corky indeed, cheerful song, trippy scenes, and the so called King of All Cosmos flying around. But when the title appeared, I went to turn off the PS2 and make sure nothing was wrong.

*Click*

?

*Click*

What the hell?

*Click* *Click* *Click*

The PS2 is… Not turning off? What the hell?

If that doesn’t work, I’ll pull the plug off.

*Sshk*

As soon as the plug went off, the PS2 started vibrating and overheating, and the game started slowing down, as it showed the Prince, the main character, turning his head in a yellow place, with a transparent white filter in front of the picture. Fearing it might cause a lot of damage the PS2, I plugged the power cord to the socket again, and the PS2 went back to normal, with the game running at regular speed.

Now I was completely confused, I cursed and asked myself “What the hell is happening?” in utter frustration. How can this game do that? It’s all physically impossible! Yet it’s still happening…

I felt a headache just thinking about it, and then I thought “Well, if I can’t force the game to end, I’ll have to finish it and see what happens”, after all, I read that the game was pretty short. Maybe winning it might revert the PS2 back to its normal functions.

So, with the controller in my hand, I sat down and pressed start…

The white filter disappeared, and everything was clear. The mug shot of the King appeared, with his usual indifferent look, and he spoke to me.

“… … … …”

“What took you so long, little Prince? Your royal training won’t do itself.”

“Here’s your Katamari, and start warming up. A hesitant Prince is a deadbeat Prince.”

I never got the chance to see the actual training level before, but is this really what the King was like in the beginning?

Nevertheless, a Katamari materialized in front of me, and the Prince grabbed it. Then the command prompts appeared, and I started moving the analog sticks. Didn’t seem to be a hard game, I thought, the controls were pretty responsive, I just need to get used to the tank-style of gameplay. Once all the prompts were done, the King spoke again.

“Well done Prince, such movement, such grace. Such a shame that you are always hindered by doubts...”

“Now, to the second part of your training. Roll objects, make the Katamari bigger, and confront bigger challenges.”

After he disappeared, many random objects sprung out of the floor and into the ground.

As I approached one of the small things, it rolled into the ball with a squeaky noise, and the HUD showed me what I rolled.

I rolled more objects, and I steadily grew bigger, to the point that even the screen had to zoom out to keep my field of vision wide. But eventually I was stopped by the King.

“Aaah… See? It isn’t bad at all. Why can’t you show this determination out there?”

“It seems that you just need to be in the right mindset to pass through with no problems.”

“But anyway, now is time for the real deal. We hope you give us good results like you did here, cowardly Prince.”

Is this how the King really is? No wonder he’s so demanding in the game. However, every time he interrupted to talk here, I could see the Prince look at his feet, like he was being yelled at, is the Prince as reluctant as the King says?

As soon as the King delivered his final message, a swirling animation made everything fade to black.

Then the game showed me a little movie, the starry night was suddenly interrupted by the King who, for some reason, was flying out of control, smacking every star in his way, until he finally collided with the moon, breaking into pieces.

After such nonsense, the scene moved to the Prince and the King, having a conversation on top of the Earth.

“Alas, the stars are gone. The stars are no more. A spectacular show, if We do say so Ourselves. But why do you have such a sad look in your face, little Prince? Did you like the starry sky? Well, We have good news for you: You’ll have another command to follow, involving the creation of new stars. By using the Katamaries on a planet called Earth.”

“What’s that? You are still sad? Oh, cheer up depressing Prince, It’ll be fun! At least, for Us…”

I knew that the King was definitely uncanny and dominating, but here, he’s rather… Macabre.

After a brief loading time, the screen showed me the Prince, standing in what the game called the “Home Planet”. From what I saw, this is pretty much the hub, where the Prince could stroll around, look at picture, objects obtained, change music and vibration in the options, save the game, and look at the stars you made.

But when it is the first time you enter, the King barges in to tell you about it; here once I could control the Prince, nothing happened. Did the game skip a dialogue or something?

In any case, from I could go 2 ways: the Space Mushroom for battle multiplayer, or Earth to play levels. Since I just started the game, I went directly into the planet and looked around the first level. Didn’t take me too long to find it.

Before I started the actual level, I got a little speech from the King, to greet me in some language, and to tell me that how he lost a royal present that was going to the Prince.

This is what he told me:

“Take a good look of this planet, Prince.”

“Peace, prosperity, happiness, hopes, dreams…”

“We are gonna have to give a sign to the inhabitants.”

“One that will capture the attention of many, many people.”

And with that, another swirly animation to load the level. Strange for the King to make such speech. You’ll think he would tell me something bizarre, after all, all form of logic went flying off the window the moment I turned on the console.

Anyhow, once the level started, the King went straight to business and told me I needed to be 10 cm big to pass the level. And then the clock started ticking.

I was inside a house on a table, and for a first level, it wasn’t really hard. There were many pins, matches, dices, eventually I went down and started grabbing candies. Suddenly, I was ambushed by a mouse! And as I collided into a wall, I got my bearings and recovered the stuff that fell from the Katamari.

But then, I noticed something. The graphics are meant to be simple and blocky, this applied to everything, from cookies to chunks of lands. Yet, that mouse looked… “Real”. Not “real” like hyper realistic “real” or next gen graphics “real”, but it looked like it belonged to a more realistic game like GTA Vice City or something. Any game meant to have a more realistic approach that the PS2 could run.

It sticked out like a sore thumb, and I couldn’t fathom it’s reason to be in such a game like this. But because I couldn’t anything about it, since I wasn’t big enough. Eventually, I hit the 10 cm mark, the game stopped and the King appeared.

“Mmmh-mmmh. Yes… Yes…”

“Earth is definitely full of things. Kinda boring here, too.”

“But there’s a lot of potential as well. You will be able to create MARVELOUS stars…”

“The people of Earth are gonna be very surprised with Our mission. Yes, they’ll never see Us coming.”

“Or should We say, they better don’t see YOU coming, whiny Prince.”

And then, his expression turned from stoic to a combination of happy and angry, creating a menacing look.

“Yes, this is certainly going to be… Fun <3”

“Alright, off We go.”

“ROYAL RAINBOW!”

With that, the King… “Barfed” a rainbow that engulfed the Prince and the Katamari, making them disappear, and everything faded to black.

After that level, I saw the Prince standing on the King’s hand, while he observed the Katamari. Here is where the King judges how good or bad you did in the level, and turns the Katamari into a star. In this case, since the game stopped me at exactly 10 cm, there was no way to get it bigger, and the King pretty much told me that, while I reached the goal, I could do much better.

And after showing me the 3 types of items I got the most, the Katamari started slowly ascending, until it turned into a star. And the star was pretty small, barely visible, but it kind of had a reddish tint.

With the level done, the game put me on the Home Planet, where I pondered whether to save the game or not. My memory card had space available to save a few games, but after that weird display of technology manipulation I saw when this started, I was reluctant of doing so. Then I decided not to, since I saw that the game was short enough to be completed in a day, plus I didn’t want my memory card to get corrupted or anything.

So I went to Earth to search for the next level.

Now, to trim out the fat a bit, I’ll try to write down details that weren’t mentioned yet. One of the game’s flaws is that it can get repetitive, to the point that even the dialogues are the same, only with different words here and there. The King’s speech, while still different from the original game, it isn’t different compared to the first level’s speech.

Reflecting over the planet, preparing a surprise to the planet, taking me to the level, and giving me the mark. In this case, it needed to be 20 cm big, and it was the same as the previous level, only with a few bigger objects, and a door to the backyard.

Once I reached 10 cm big, the King told me that I was ready to proceed to the backyard, and as soon as I exited the house, I saw something that marvelled me.

A human, playing golf. But just like the mouse in the first level, this guy looked… Abnormally real. Again, not REAL real, but more real than Katamari Damacy’s version. And just like the mouse, it looked out of place.

But other than that, the level continued like last time, only this time, I continued playing after reaching the 20 cm mark, making the Katamari grow bigger.

Once the time stopped, I was 33 cm big. And at the result screen the King was fairly impressed. I said “fairly”, since he made his “We’re sure We could have made it better” remark. And then, the Katamari turned into a star, with the same reddish tint as before.

And then, it takes me… To the Home Planet? That’s strange, after the second level, you get a cutscene about a family, the Hoshino, going to the launch of the father, who was supposed to go to the moon, but nothing played. Did the game skip it? Or it isn’t there at all? Odd.

Also, I noticed that the Space Mushroom was empty, when it should have, at least, 2 or 3 cousins walking around, since the more levels you play, the more cousins appear.

In any case, I didn’t plan on inviting any friend to play this with me, they’ll think I’m screwing with them.

But the icing on the cake was the level select: In-between main levels, there’s a different type of level, where you create constellations. In these levels, you have to roll only a type of object that is scattered across the level, which matches the constellation that’s supposed to be created.

After the second level, the “Make Cancer” level has to appear, and you have to roll all sorts of crabs, but instead, there’s only “Make a Star 3” level.

This time, the level was a small chunk of a park, with a sand box, a garden, and even a little slide.

The goal was 50 cm, and in this level, the King assured the Prince that, in this level, being hesitant is NOT an option, since it’s a “preview of what’s to come”. I swear I saw the Prince shiver a bit once the King said that.

And the level started, and it wasn’t really that bad, got into 27 cm pretty fast, as I was starting to get the hang of this. Once I started exploring the level a bit more, I found a rat beneath a wooden plate, seeing it as an easy target, I moved the sticks up and down as fast as I could to use the charge, and when I came into contact wi-

*Sprrat*

What th- HELL!

THE RAT! IT WAS CRUSHED!

Literally, the rat was squashed as it came into contact with the Katamari, creating a small splash of blood, and its limp body sticked into the ball. God, there even was a bit of entrails coming out of it’s mouth.

As soon as I saw it, I paused the button. It wasn’t enough to make me puke, but I did make a gag reflex. Seriously, it wasn’t realistic, but it caught me off-guard, and I’m not really use to gore. Call me squishy if you want, I don’t care.

It took me a moment to un-pause the game, and when I did, I receive a message of the King, as I kept playing.

“What did We tell you? Don’t be hesitant.”

“You’re going to complete Our mission, whether you like it or not.”

Now that was senseless, the King knew I paused the game, and that message was for me, or he’s saying it to the Prince? After all, if you pause the game, the Prince remains still. Maybe that meant that the Prince was hesitant when I paused the game, I don’t know. This all took a different direction from weird to insane.

I dreaded to see how the rest of the game was like…

As soon as I reached 50 cm, I stopped playing, fearing that if I grew bigger, I might roll up the cat and dog that are in the level, and suffer the same fate. I could wait 3 minutes if it means sparing their lives.

However, the King interrupted again when a minute of nothing passed.

“Stalling again, mini-Prince? We thought we raised you better.”

Once he said that, his face changed again, this time to anger.

“Do you want to end like your cousins?”

What happened next was… Saddening.

As soon as the King said that, the Prince started jerking his head, like he was holding sobs and failing at it, he placed his palms into the Katamari, and looked at me, with a sad and expecting expression in his face.

And I felt bad for the Prince, now the King’s true colours are on display, and the Prince is sad victim of his… Twisted orders.

Fearing what would happen if I lose the game, and out of pity, I decided to keep playing the level. I tried to be as careful as I could, rolling every inanimate object I came across, and avoiding anything alive. But even with my patience, I couldn’t avoid a cat that was walking around the sand box.

He stood no chance, a mix between the squashing of organs, the cracking of bones, and a painful meow could be heard from the speakers. I looked away so I don’t see the process, but I eventually I would have to look again. The corpse was slightly disturbing, but I was already startled by the sounds.

Poor thing, he made a bigger mess than the rat.

But eventually, with a 70 cm Katamari, the level was done.

“See? You can achieve good results.”

“You just need the right form of… Motivation.”

The King said with a smile, as he took me out of the level. And I returned to the Home Planet.

This is where I understood everything. The King doesn’t care about anything, his own family, or the people of different planets. He only cares for himself and his twisted fantasies. I still don’t get the reason being the red colour of the stars, but since it involves using a giant ball that can grow on sizes and kills anything living when it rolls them, maybe they announce the end of days.

Maybe that’s why the stars were destroyed…

“What’s the matter Prince, troubled about what happened?”

“We are surprised. By now, you should have already got used to this.”

It caught my attention how the King appeared out of nowhere to point out my stalling. Although by this point, it shouldn’t be so surprising.

Sadly, this realization didn’t change anything. I still had a game stuck in my Playstation 2 that apparently can control the flow of energy in my house with god know what sort of engineering trick, and I can’t even turn off without damaging the PS2.

I could either risk the permanent damage to my PS2, or beat the game. And yeah, I have a PS3, but is a super slim, can’t play PS2 games.

Back to the topic at hand, I unlocked level 4, I think I saw that this game had 10 main levels, with the last level being “Make the Moon”. I decided to gather will to complete the rest of the game, and I headed to the planet to make the 4th star.

This time, I was inside the house, and the mark was 1m big. From what I saw in a few playthroughs, this stage uses the entirety of the house level. Technically, the game has 3 levels, but the different stages uses chunks of it, save for 3 stages, and this is one of them.

However, I noticed something in this level: The graphics looked less… “Blocky”. The textured were more detailed, and the objects seemed to have more polygons. But the Prince and his Katamari were still with the same models.

Nevertheless, I started rolling the Katamari and obtaining more and more objects. But I stopped when I was able to explore more of the house, and I found a kid, playing happily.

“No… Don’t tell me I can roll him.” I thought. That told me I needed to be extra careful.

It took me a while, but I was able to reach 1m without rolling anything in the street. While I had one last minute on the clock, I decided to charge up and roll a bunch of construction helmets and briefcases. However, because the Katamari was quite big, I could barely see what was in front of me and-

*Tusshhh*

“WAAAAAHH-MMMM!!”

*Crack*

Oh my god… I ran into my bathroom as fast as I can. I gagged as I tried to resist the urge to throw up.

A little girl was violently ambushed by the Katamari, and was quickly rolled up. Since the Katamari was charged up, the sheer force of it caused the girl to be snapped in two, and her back was bent in the wrong way. But her face, my god… Her skull was crushed, and it showed in her face, bloodshot in her eyes, bloody mouth, deformed nose, some of her teeth were ripped off, and pieces of her skin were scratched away, showing actual muscle.

And her body was also severed, with even a few pieces of broken bones sticking out of the joints of the body, like the knees and wrists.

The details of how the body was damaged by the roll-up were gross, and since it came out of nowhere, it scared the fuck out of me.

And while I was in the bathroom, I started hearing the alarm sound effects, when you had 30 seconds lefts. As I tried to regain my composure, I walked back to my room. I fell to the bed and didn’t even look at the TV. I waited until the level was over, and as soon as I stopped hearing the music, I looked again to exit the level.

Uuugh, the corpse was right in front of me. I could hardly look at it.

“Well done Prince! She didn’t even see you coming!”

“We are pleasantly surprised by this sudden turn of events.”

“We hope We get to see this form of performance later on… Alright, time to go.”

And with that, I was taken away.

No one would be spared. No one would receive mercy. Every human will be used to fulfil the scheme of the King…

And the future levels weren’t going to be any different. I’ll pretty much give you a quick summary.

“Make a Star 5” was the Prince rolling in the park from the third level, but now with a town that can be entered by rolling downhill, “Make a Star 6“ introduced a new level, the biggest one, and the staged used a small plaza, a rural area with a little lake, and a small town up a hill. “Make a Star 7” was the same as the last one, with a different object placement, and bigger objects.

And with every level, there were more calamities like in Make a Star 4. People getting hurt, mashed, tear apart, pushed away, crushed, etc. Every one of them having an accurate (maybe) representation of how would the body is affected if it was trapped between a rock and a hard place, rolling and rolling around. Each living their corpse sticked to the ball.

And every time I took the life of any individual in a spectacular way, I would pause and go to the bathroom, the more levels I completed, the more sick I felt in my stomach.

But anyway, there were 3 levels left to finish. 3 levels to end this madness.

“Make a Star 8” is where things get different. The fourth stage made the graphics less simplistic and slightly more elaborated. Here, the graphics increased even more, with more detailed textured and even making the objects breakable. Even the clothes of the Prince started gaining actual cloth texture; it was like I was suddenly playing Shadow of the Colossus, only with less visual effects.

In any case, the stage used the entirety of the town level, with the little park, the town below, and a little lake similar to the one in “Make a Star 6” in the outskirts of the city.

But what surprised me was the Lock Ness look-a-like monster in the lake. I would never be big enough to roll him. But any case, aside from that, this level was just as savage as any other level. There was a Japanese festival in the town downhill, once I was big enough, I rolled 2 guys carrying a shrine. The shrine broke into smithereens, causing the pieces of wood to impale them, even the Katamari acted as a hammer and the wood as nails. And the screams didn’t make it any easier.

After that, when I was able to access the other part of the city, a lot of things were bigger than me, and backtracking wouldn’t work, since there weren’t any object that would help me significantly.

I did see a baseball team playing in the field of the new segment, and seeing as I didn’t have any other option, I sighed and rolled into their game. The fractures suffered by victims were beyond repair, completely disfiguring their bodies and painting the place with a new intense red colour with mushy piles of what used to be organs. But the worse part was that, while I was doing this, the surviving member were, not only screaming, but sobbing as well. One of them even fell to his knees and started crying, either ignoring or not knowing that became the new thing I rolled up. And the way his crying turned into a scream… I just couldn’t bear it.

But I had to, I needed to endure it if I wanted to end this. Although, from time to time, I wonder why didn’t I just sacrifice the console…

However, what takes the cake is what happened when I was 8m 50cm big. At one point, when I was rolling around the lake, the monster came out of the water, and when I was distracted, I was ambushed by an elephant from the left, and I couldn’t steer the Katamari to regain balance, I went to the lake, and I strike the neck of the monster so hard, it’s broke, and the head went down to the ground, crushing a few people walking around the playground just beside the lake. A combination of blood of the monster and blood from the people caused the lake to be painted red.

In fact, the King appeared and congratulated me for creating a “beautiful pool of red”, and a disgusted grunt was my response.

Nevertheless, the mark was 12m big, and although the level was kinda hard, I managed to reach the goal in time.

Alright, 2 more levels to go, the end is near…

“Make a Star 9” was once again in the world level of MAS 6 and 7, here the goal was 30m, and in this one, things really got intense. In the previous level, even if the goal was 12m, once you reach that size, you can start rolling up houses, but that’s only if you manage to grow that big and still have enough time.

In this level, however, it is inevitable to grow enough to roll up houses and buildings, around 17m I was plowing through most of the first areas with no problem.

That is, every structure I touched suffered severe damage to the point most buildings crumble as I roll them, causing the Katamari to be filled with shards, pieces and broken materials. At one point, the Katamari looked like a spiky ball of wood spikes. I felt bad for the Prince, rolling a dangerous thing, probably in pain every time he touches it.

And once I reached the 30m mark, I still had 3 minutes left. And after the King acknowledged the goal was reached, he started talking again. This time, with a clearly malevolent look in his face.

“Can you feel it, Prince? The beauty of the work you managed to achieve?”

“We are very pleased of your results, even if your performance needs to be tuned up.”

“Although, We can see… Potential in your drive.”

“Do you get it? Your drive? What drives you to accomplish your tasks?”

“Of course you understand Us, but We are starting to see you hesitate again.”

“But don’t worry, We understand what it means. You’ll see soon…”

The Prince’s drive? What does he means? The King’s punishment is what drives the Prince to do such atrocities, even if the Prince feels bad.

But in any case, the level eventually ended, I was evaluated, and then I was taken back to the Home Planet.

That’s it, the last level. My hands were shaking, I felt goosebumps and a headache, my heart was beating steadily but strongly, I even felt a few drops of sweat, and my stomach didn’t get any better.

But this would be the end…

I went to the final level, named “Make the Moon”. This was the stage that used the entire of the world level used in MAS 6, 7 and 9. And the mark was… 300 METERS!? At least I had 25 minutes to make it, but still, that was surprising compared to the previous level.

But other than that, the level was similar to the MAS 9, started in a farm area, going into a city, taking the life of others…

…

“Even with a gigantic goal, I might be able to reach it in time” I thought…

…

Reached the 20m mark, now I can cross the island to reach a new city. Maybe I’ll be able to roll up the fish swimming in between.

…

“Aaah, We can see it… Your drive is pretty determined.”

The King suddenly interrupted the ordeal, with the same malevolent expression as before.

“Now you understand, petit Prince? This drive actually likes what you are doing. What he’s making you do.”

What “he’s” making to do? Does he mean ME?

“Oh! He realized it! At last, the mystery is solved.”

I don’t know why, but as surreal as it sounds, I stood up to reply to the King, with the controller still in my hands.

“You are wrong! I HATE what you are doing!”

“Ha ha ha… No, you are not. What else would you be playing this game with such grace?”

“Wha-!? What do you mean?”

“You see, there were others before you, other drives… You can call them players if it makes you feel any better.”

“They stumbled upon this, upon this creating, out of mere curiosity. And all of them failed in completing Our demand at one point or another.”

“They had to silently observe their failure as We… “Corrected” the little Prince. His petty whining wasn’t just for witnessing the magnificent of Our idea first hand…”

“But you… You are special… We can see it in your eyes.”

I was about to speak, but he got across his message first.

“You hate popular works similar to ours… Call them games. You think it’s empty and stupid to do what’s popular.”

“But that’s because you love being against the norm. You love going in the wrong direction, not because you prefer it, but because you do it out of spite for others.”

“Even if you got the “original” boring and uninteresting version of this work of art, you’ll never truly love it. Your care would be as superficial as other people who play trendy games.”

“But… How did you…?”

“We could see your initial reactions, you just couldn’t comprehend it. But once you wrapped your head around it, you played flawlessly.”

“Just like any other person who buys a game about being a soldier in the middle of a war.”

“You hate them, so you look for other things that MAY look like they are weird and different, but when you analyze them, you find out you are doing the exact same things others do, only with a different look…”

“… You sick fuck.”

“You are the one that keeps playing.”

“Because I’m trying to end your task for the Prince!”

“You lost the very first time you turn on your… “Console”. You don’t have the will to make your point, since you are afraid of trashing it, yet you think you can beat Us in our own game… Pathetic.”

“Also, didn’t you hear Us? Even if you finish our demand, you can’t save the Prince or anyone here. We’ll just wait for the day you pass Our sport to another one, and the process will begin anew. In the meantime, the Prince will keep practicing…”

…

“Oh look, you already reached 60m. Can you see how you still enjoy it?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I was speechless, how could he know all of this? Who made this game? HOW it was made? And most importantly, why?

I was flabbergasted and angry, but my instinct was forcing me to play, to keep this going. I wanted to get up, take off the plug and watch the PS2 burn as the game burned inside it.

But I couldn’t. Something was forcing me to continue, my mind, my subconsciousness, my instincts, I don’t know… I swear I wanted to stop, and I simply couldn’t force myself to stand and stop, even if it sounds stupid.

It seems the King was right…

Eventually, I was rolling up entire chunks of lands and continents. I found myself travelling through different cities. I even reached a ferry wheel. While I couldn’t roll it at 100m, I knocked the little cabins into the ground. Hysteria, madness, dead people and broken limbs were predominant on the ground below.

In the end, after rolling around in laps for a while, I managed to reach 300m with only 6 minutes left on the clock… That was the end.

Just to wait, I wandered around the ocean, seeing if I could find other pieces of land to roll up. Dyeing the colour of the water from blue to red with the blood from the hundreds of people used to increase the size of that accursed ball…

Once the 6 minutes passed, the King congratulated me once again for finishing up another task, and expressed his admiration for the size of the Katamari.

Even if in the result screen he told me otherwise.

But now, things are, once again, different. Every Katamari I rolled became a star, and the more levels I completed, the stars became slightly bigger. In this occasion, the Katamari was meant to become a moon, and remember when I pointed out that the stars were red colored?

When the Katamari ascended to become a moon, the end result was a giant irregular asteroid-looking moon. It wasn’t white and gray like our moon, this one was dark grey, almost black, and it irradiated a dark red colour, just like the stars…

Once the results were done, the game faded to black and presented a cutscene, with the King and the Prince floating in space in front of Earth.

The King was holding the moon I made, and made a pose to launch it, like a pitcher in a baseball game. The Prince gulped worried, as the King swung his arm with all his might, throwing the moon into the planet, causing a giant explosion that filled the room with a deafening noise.

Once the smoke cleared up, it revealed that the moon caused significant damage to the world, as little cracks around the crater created by the collision surrounded it. The camera then cut to the King, looking happy, and the Prince, looking exhausted. The looked at each other, and the King pointed to the right edge of the screen, as if sending him to the planet, and the Prince slowly flew until he was off-screen, and then the cutscene ended.

And the credits started, however, this wasn’t exactly the end of the game yet, as Katamari Damacy had a bonus end level in the middle of the credits. After the last cutscene, the camera would pan across space, moving downwards. The Home Planet would appear, then the Space Mushroom, and finally arrive on Earth, with the Prince in front of the moon, and the goal was to roll up all the countries, 195 to be exact, as the credits were displayed.

The song playing is called “Katamari of Love”, and is a nice orchestra song, with chunks of the main theme melody at the beginning and the end. And from what I saw, it talked that a simple idea, the unity and cooperation of people across the world, could bring everyone together and create a collected feeling of peace. An idea that, although absurd at first glance, carries a value of trust and altruism that seems to be disappearing the more we more into the future.

But in this version, everything was completely different.
The camera showed the Home Planet, without much change, then a completely deserted Space Mushroom, and finally the Prince looking at the product of this entire experience: a moon created with the only reason to engulf the entire planet, spread hopelessness and despair among it’s few survivors, and cause a mass genocide that no one would be alive to document in future history books, aside from the only person that wished none of this happened.

And as I rolled the countries, Katamari of Love was playing in the background, only with a clear difference: Instead of a bombastic and well-composed song arranged of many instruments, it was only played by a single violin, giving it a very subtle and sad feeling.

It gave me the impression that the message was still the same, but with a different way of demonstrating it. It’s not uniting everyone with good intentions and peace, it was uniting everyone granting everyone nothing but death. After all, at the face of death, we are all equal, just like when we are born.

We can’t think. We can’t do.

We are all in the same situation, in the same place, in the same state

What brings us to this world doesn’t care for us, and what takes us way doesn’t bother to know us.

And the worst part… Is that we can’t fight it.

We are stuck in the same way for eternity, bearing the same pain everyone bares at the same time…

As the song started reaching the chorus for the second time, the camera started zooming out, and as the planet grew smaller and smaller, the Home Planet and the Space Mushroom reappeared, each in a different side.

And just when the song finished with the main theme melody, I grabbed the last and biggest country, Russia. The counter reached 195, and a little crown appeared on top, showing me that I got all of them.

Finally, it was over, it was done…

With that, the screen faded to black, and then the Prince appeared at the center, looking down in shame, while the text “Goodbye” was above him, with everything else being nothing but void.

And after that last image disappeared, the PS2 turned off automatically. I opened the console, took the game out, and looked at it.

I reflected on what just happened. The blood-curling screams, the desperation of the people, the mass of limps, guts, and whatnot, and especially the King’s words. All of these things are still flesh in my mind, as I stared dumbfounded. While there was a clear connection between the nature of the game, the King’s accusations, and… Well… My attitude, I still wonder what came through the mind of whoever took a seemingly innocent game, and turned into this.

This kind of things are common, people giving twisted visions of things that, you look at them and don’t think much of them, but if you analyze them in detail, you might find more than you can see at first…

With the disk in my hand, I pondered what should I do with it. Clearly, I wasn’t special, I was just someone else with enough requirements to make this game teach me a lesson, and I know I’m not the only one. Selling it would be out of the question, I wouldn’t want someone else to play this, so I considered destroying.

But then I realized something, that woman who owned this didn’t destroy it, she sold it, and who knows if she wasn’t the original owner. Who knows how many souls went through the horrors of this game, yet it’s still there, in my hand.

Either I’m the only one smart enough to think of destroying this, or it is impossible to do so… At least, I thought that.

However, I would put this to the test, since I didn’t have anything to lose.

I went to my garage, opened up my tool box, and with a hammer, I smashed the game repeatedly. I wouldn’t stop until it was nothing more than bits and pieces of its former self. Once the disk was completely destroyed, I took every single shard into a garbage can, which I took out later that day.

Now I was done, that was enough for one day. I rested my head and watched TV, had dinner, and went to sleep.

The next day was incredible, the sky was clear, the birds were singing, and after brushing my teeth and putting on my clothes, I felt like playing a bit of Megaman X Collection.

I grabbed the box, took off the disk, and I opened the PS2 to-

…

No…

NO!

I DESTROYED IT!

I FUCKING SMASHED IT TO PIECES!

The game was still there, waiting for me to give it a spin again.

What was going on!? Someone, SOMETHING, must be playing tricks on me!

With no hesitation, I took the game out of the console, put it back into its black case, and went to the nearest Game Stop store I could find.

I didn’t care anymore, I don’t know what sort of freaking trickery, illusion or whatever the fuck happened back there, I simply didn’t care. All I wanted was the game out of my house, and out of my life.

Luckily, once I reached it, the clerk allowed me to sell it. He seemed new, since he didn’t test the game or anything, he trusted my judgement that I was selling some random used game.

Poor, unfortunate soul that ever decides to buy it…

However, once I was about to go, the clerk asked me something.

“Excuse me sir, but you look… Rather pale. Are you ok?”