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Portables (Games)

Katamari Damacy and Gamespy Wireless on the DS 41

Posted by Zonk from the rollin'-rollin'-rollin' dept.
Hit quirky game Katamari Damacy will be coming to the Nintendo DS sometime in the near future, according to Joystiq. From the article: "The game is listed under Namco's planned DS titles. Squint hard at the top of the image, and you'll see it. Get that stylus ready. You're going to be pushing around a world of crap with it, soon enough." At the same time, GamesAreFun.com has information about the DS Wireless Service, which is going to be hosted partially by Gamespy.
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Katamari Damacy and Gamespy Wireless on the DS More

Katamari Damacy and Gamespy Wireless on the DS

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  • But.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ghost429 ( 828987 ) <ghost429NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @11:11AM (#11990926)
    Wouldn't the Katamari pick up my stylus when it got too big?

  • Great gaem, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @11:20AM (#11990960) Journal
    KD is a great game, but it was *way* too short. Ten levels? It only really gets good on the last level! I'd at least like to see a "free play" level, where it's not timed and you can just keep rolling stuff up forever (or until you've rolled up the whole universe).

    • Re:Great gaem, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @11:27AM (#11991006) Homepage Journal
      Three of the levels have "Eternal" modes. If you get your katamari up to a certain size, you unlock "Eternal mode" where you can play the level for as long as you like.

      I forget the exact figures needed to unlock Eternal modes, but it's something like 600m on Make the Moon. Once you've rolled up EVERYTHING, there's a theoretical maximum size of about 900m on that level.

      • Re:Great gaem, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ghost_MH ( 677894 )
        900m is about as large as you can make the thing. Sadly, each of the Eternal levels seems to have a maximum size...Try as I may there seems to be a limit I cannot break in any of the three Eternal Modes. One cool thing in the Eternal Modes are the appearances of the small prince's family members. In the very first Eternal Level you can find a cousin of yours eating all the food in the family's fridge. What I would rather see in a Katamari Damacy game is a random level generator. It's not like the worlds ar
      • It was closer to 980M. I actually did it :) Every single object, however I don't remember the exact number.
    • The last level is actually kind of depressing in that respect. Once you've got everything, you're just a fat ball rolling around in the ocean, and there's nothing left to do. Rolling up the whole universe would be tricky, because once you've got the Earth, what do you roll on? Plus, density is such that you'd be rolling a long time just to find anything else.

      I'm not saying these problems are insurmountable; in fact I hope they are working on them in the sequel. But this still doesn't fix the primary p

    • Re:Great gaem, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      It lasts a bit longer if you go for all items and all names. That can take a few weeks if you have a regular job, and the last few items will drive you crazy trying to find them, even with the help of Google.

      And then there's the ending credits "level", in which it is exremely difficult to pick up all countries. I went for all items and all names but only played the ending credits once, and that was only after I read that it was playable and wanted to see what it looked like. It gets really hard toward t

    • How do you roll up the universe when your drunken bastard of a father has destroyed everything?
    • I haven't played this yet.. Is it a good have-some-drinks-with-friends-and-play type game?
      • Maybe it'd be more fun if you're drunk, but the two-player mode didn't really seem all that entertaining to me - too limited.

        Better off just taking turns on some of the wierder 1-player levels :)

  • Can the DS handle it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Corngood ( 736783 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @11:22AM (#11990971)
    I have my doubts. The game takes advantage of the huge polygon pushing ability of the PS2 (loads of similar objects, very little texturing or blending). The DS is nowhere near as capable in this respect. I reckon they would even have some trouble on other home consoles, or PC.
    • The Xbox and the GameCube can push more polygons than the PS2, which shows exactly how mech you know about video game systems.

      Obviously NAMCO thinks the DS can handle it, and they have more experience with programming the DS than you or I.

      • Re:Can the DS handle it? (Score:4, Informative)

        by oskillator ( 670034 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @12:28PM (#11991424)
        "The Xbox and the GameCube can push more polygons than the PS2"

        Can they? The Xbox and GameCube GPUs are relatively fixed-function compared to the PS2's, which are more like generic DSP units. Yes, the Xbox and GameCube can render a more complex scene than the PS2 at the same framerate, under certain common constraints, but the PS2 offers much greater flexibility. So, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the PS2 could push more flat-shaded polygons than either the Xbox or GC (which was Corngood's point).

        As for the question of whether the DS can handle Katamari Damacy, obviously the answer is yes, if it's simplified enough. The real question is whether the game simplified to that level is going to retain the value of the original game. I'm not seeing it... but you're quite welcome to surprise me, MANCO.


        • but you're quite welcome to surprise me, MANCO.

          You have no idea how hilarious that sounds to someone who knows Japanese. It's NAMCO. "Manko" means cunt, or pussy.

        • Re:Can the DS handle it? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday March 20, 2005 @03:52PM (#11992643) Homepage
          I'm pretty sure it can handle it.

          1. The DS has a lower resolution. This lets 3D hardware that's slightly better than a N64 provide relatively better visuals than it did. If the game only provided 3D on one of the screens then so much the better.

          2. The PS2 can't handle Katamari Damacy, in a manner of speaking. I read in the post-mortem of the game in Game Developer Magazine that the game "cheats" when the ball gets loaded with stuff, removing difficult-to-see and relatively small stuff on the interior of the ball as it increases in size. Just increase this cheating factor on the DS and there you go. It'd be less noticable on the DS because, again, of the reduced resolution.

          3. Katamari Damacy isn't all that bad. The PS2 is still relatively underpowered when it comes to Gamecube and Xbox. It's still more powerful than the DS (or PSP for that matter), but see #1 above.

          It's also possible that Namco could cheat, by using sprites for some objects. If the camera is not very moveable then this may work for objects not yet collected, as the game could use the DS' sprite scaling to simulate 3D to some extent.

          They could also cheat by not actually allowing objects to stick to the ball and using a generic katamari model for it that just gets bigger, but a lot of the game's charm would be lost in that event. That would be a worst-case scenario for DS Katamari Damacy, I'd guess.
        • I believe you're correct here. I was always under the impression that the PS2 could, indeed, handle more flat shaded polygons than either the GAMECUBE or the Xbox. Not that millions of flat shaded polygons are very interesting to look at. Though I do have to wonder...Can such high quality models even be loaded onto the PS2 given it's relatively small cache of RAM.
    • You really don't know what your talking about do you? Obviously, anyways, the DS can do it, otherwise they wouldn't be making it. :)
      • You are correct, they obviously do have a plan. My point was that people shouldn't expect a port of the ps2 version. Think along the lines of Splinter Cell on AGB.

        How about a top-down version? I think that could work rather well on the ds, and rolling around the ball with the touch screen would be intuitive.
    • I don't think they are going to use polygonal models of things on the DS. Just sprites.

      So it will be a big ball of sprites making up the 3d ball, in an almost 3d world (3d landscape, but sprite objects).
      • I should point out that all consoles after the 16 bit era, except for the Saturn, were inherently Polygon-based. Even 2D masterpieces like Symphony of the Night are a bunch of 2D textures mapped to very rigid polygons. Handhelds up until this point have been the exception, as the polygon pushing power of the GBA is not exactly legendary, but I wouldn't be surprised if the DS was 100% textured.

        Don't get me wrong, this is great in a lot of ways. Just imagining the optimizations that must have gone into, s

    • Re:Can the DS handle it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @03:58PM (#11992679) Homepage
      You are kidding, right?

      Katamari Damacy didn't exactly make the PS2 cry and beg for mercy. You're talking about a field of objects and vision that while it could be cluttered it didn't exceed the amount of pushable polys by a long shot. Certainly it didn't have anywhere near as many polys on screen as, say, Madden 2004, and those were textured / lit / etc.

      Plus, Katamari is a prime example of a game that could be optimized. All of the "regular" edges were rounded, almost unnecessarily so. Removing or reducing the rounded edges could reduce polycount by 50 - 90%. Likewise, with the reduced size / resolution of the DS screen it would be much easier to "drop out" things from the world sooner, from ants that stick around long after they're black dots on the regular screen to cars that you can barely see when you're giant. Katamari is optimized for such transitions, and to do so would be relatively easy. You could probably get another 50% poly savings there too. Plus the DS is running at about 40% length and 40% height resolution on each of it's screens, saving between 50% - 80% on poly rendering, depending on how they decide to use the second screen.

      You can also drop the "special effect" in katamari. You know, that distance blur thing, which so many people find so annoying. On a TFT screen, it will probably be impossible to see anyway.

      And if you did have to remove objects from the world, it would be relatively easy to do, and just boost the size multiplier of the remaining objects.

      There are a ton of ways that you can optimise the design of Katamari Damacy down to a smaller system. This shouldn't be a problem at all.

      • Well, in all fairness, it was intensive enough that they did have to drop the frame rate down to 30, probably because Namco figured there was no way the game was going to run at 60 all the time.
  • Unfortunately Namco (so far) have decided not to ship the PS2 version in europe - even in the UK, where there are no language porting costs.

    If this is released on the DS over here it might just convince me to buy my very first portable nintendo device...

    • Re:But will it be available in europe? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fr0dicus ( 641320 ) on Sunday March 20, 2005 @12:53PM (#11991591) Journal
      They claim the code isn't in any state to convert to the lower PAL framerate. Timing-based games require some tweaking in this respect. Metroid Prime 2 with its 60hz only mode and Ninja Gaiden with its broken first person view in 50hz mode tend to support this pov that developers occasionally use as an excuse. I believe Sony insist on a 50hz mode, and would be unlikely to change policy for a third party.

      • If KD can't be made to run in 50 Hz for the European market, then why not run it in PAL-M, the 525-line 60 Hz variant of PAL used in Brazil among other places? I've read that almost all recent PAL TVs can sync to 60 Hz.

  • I just wonder if they will replace most of the 3d objects with billboards (sprites always facing the camera) to improve speed. I don't see how the DS can handle this game in its native state. Maybe Namco is going to make a side scroller version much like all Gameboy ports used to become.
    • Billboards could work if the camera isn't freely movable, and if it uses a lot of different sprites for different angles. That'd require a lot of management of sprite memory though, especially if the graphics chips in the DS have the same sprite memory limitations as the GBA does (which it probably doesn't).

      They could use a combination of methods. Mario 64 has many ball-shaped enemies that are represented by flat sprites. Objects with cylindrical components, like lampposts, could also be cheated around

      • Billboards could work if the camera isn't freely movable, and if it uses a lot of different sprites for different angles.

        Billboards worked for the karts in Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Kart Super Circuit.

        especially if the graphics chips in the DS have the same sprite memory limitations as the GBA does (which it probably doesn't).

        GBA has 96 KB of VRAM. Nintendo DS has roughly 650 KB of VRAM. Besides, a lot of GBA games routinely swap sprite cels into VRAM in real time; see my white pa [pineight.com]

        • Billboards worked for the karts in Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, and Mario Kart Super Circuit.

          But Katamari Damacy is a greatly different game from any of those. Only eight carts on a track compared to a world full of things, including a big rotating ball containing the last few dozen of those things collected all rotating together.

          GBA has 96 KB of VRAM. Nintendo DS has roughly 650 KB of VRAM. Besides, a lot of GBA games routinely swap sprite cels into VRAM in real time; see my white paper on the tec

          • [Mario Kart 64 has o]nly eight carts on a track compared to [Katamari Damacy's] world full of things, including a big rotating ball containing the last few dozen of those things collected all rotating together.

            Then roll your ball over some [?] blocks, [(Slashdot is configured to delete Spanish inverted question marks)] blocks, banana peels, turtle shells, moles, crabs, snowmen, penguins, thwomps, coconuts, porcupines, chomps, and various other trash on a Mario Kart 64 course.

            • All of those things are not on the same course, and only rarely is even a handful on-screen at once. Further, it doesn't matter much what direction a banana peel faces, most enemies face the player. (And thwomps are polygonal, too.) Katamari Damacy has an order of magnitude more things on-screen at once, and when they're all on the ball and rotating they're considerably more difficult to render convincingly as sprites. So I say unto you: nyaah!

              At the heart of this is an issue of feel over pure design.
  • So we have this great game, Katami Damacy, and it made a name for itself being unique and fun. It was also released brand new for the PS2 at $19.95. You think it'll release on the DS for $19.95? Somehow I doubt it. Should it? That's a tough one to answer. Someone help me out. I want it for the DS and for $19.95 I would pick it up first thing on the day it came out...I'll still get it when it ends up costing more...but it would be a nice surprise.

  • More news on Age of Empires DS!

    AoE DS will be a remake of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. Apparently, it will now be a "fast-paced" turn-based strategy game. There will be at least 5 civilizations to choose from, at least 15 different types of buildings, and more than 50 unit types. A combat advisor will help you with tactics for battle during your campaign.

    Source: Nintendo Power

    They do show potential screenshots, but they look nothing like Age of Kings. Actually, they look downright horrible. But
  • As nifty as the stylus is for many game types, I really hope they don't lock you into using it for KD. It would be pretty tough to keep your inertia up if you have to keep swiping the screen from bottom to top. The D-pad should at least be an option.
    • I thought of two ways: 1) One-sided. Set up like Metroid Prime: Hunters, except the stylus moves the ball, the D-Pad moves the camera, and L jumps. Going up and down on the screen charges the ball (or circling). Can work with A/B/X/Y/L. 2) Dual. Pretty much uses the D-Pad and A/B/X/Y as the PS2's sticks so that it retains the tank controls. R could jump, and I'm not sure of L. Maybe first-person POV for L. Trust me, it's gotten me thinking.
    • I thought of two ways:

      1) One-sided. Set up like Metroid Prime: Hunters, except the stylus moves the ball, the D-Pad moves the camera, and L jumps. Going up and down on the screen charges the ball (or circling). Can work with A/B/X/Y/L.

      2) Dual. Pretty much uses the D-Pad and A/B/X/Y as the PS2's sticks so that it retains the tank controls. R could jump, and I'm not sure of L. Maybe first-person POV for L.

      Trust me, it's gotten me thinking. (Sorry, figured it would be easier for people to read with b

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