Keita Takahashi. Main visual for the video game Katamari Damacy. 2004
Katamari Damacy, originally designed for the Playstation 2 console, has an unconventional premise: an extraterrestrial prince sent to earth by the King of the Cosmos must gather balls of anything and everything, to be turned into new stars to populate the universe. While the narrative and characters are appealing and the graphics rich and stimulating, the player’s tasks are simple: rolling clumps of debris—starting with erasers and bits of sushi and moving on to cows and houses—into progressively larger spheres, until whole mountains and cities are adhering themselves to the ball. With such quirky manipulations of scale, players of all ages can interact in a creative, surreal way with ordinary objects and built environments.
Learn more at MoMA.org/centuryofthechild
