Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Damacy – Que Sera Sera

You may not have noticed, but my YouTube account was terminated a few days ago. I could talk about how annoying and frustrating it is to lose something that I’ve had for years, all due to the site’s inconsistent copyright notice system, but I’ll spare you. It’s fine, really. I’ve restarted from scratch and am currently getting my travel videos reuploaded. I didn’t lost anything important…aside from my favorites list.

Having to redo my favorites list has actually been a blessing in disguise; it’s made me revisit videos and songs that I haven’t heard in ages, like the Katamari Damacy soundtracks. If you’ve followed the blog for a while, you know why I love the Katamari series: A bizarre, hilarious premise involving physics and mythology, accompanied by an eclectic blend of rock, jazz, pop, electronica, mambo, gospel, and pretty much every other musical genre you could possibly think of. “Que Sera Sera” was one of those great standouts in the original game; no one expected chill English lounge music in such a wonderfully strange Japanese game.

If you want more Katamari Damacy, you can listen to the OST here.

Good gaming, good music.

Advertisement

Daily Prompt: Polymathic Playlist

Hey, folks. Today’s Daily Prompt is all about music. Specifically, the kind of mix tape/playlist you’d make to introduce yourself to someone new. This one took a while to make, mainly because I was raised with a really eclectic music selection. I’ll just let the playlist do the talking. Happy listening! EDIT: For the sake of simplicity, I made a playlist on YouTube.

• The Seatbelts – Tank!
• Shoji Meguro – Reach Out To The Truth/Yu Narukami Theme (Persona 4 Arena Mix)
• Daft Punk – Around The World/Harder Better Faster Stronger (Alive 2007 Remix)
• Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box OST – Pandora’s Box Theme (Live)
• Katamari Damacy OST – Katamaritaino (Roll Me In)
• Malcos – Street Fighter II: Ryu Interpretation (OC Remix)
• Sixto Sounds – Electric Spark: Mega Man X: Spark Mandrill Theme (OC Remix)
• Capcom VS SNK 2 OST – This Is True Love Makin’ (London Theme)
• Miracle of Sound – Messing With The Best (Bayonetta 2 Theme)
• Hirata Shihoko & Lotus Juice – Break Out Of…(Persona 4 Ultimax Main Theme)
• Foo Fighters – Learn To Fly
• Bliss n Eso – Pale Blue Dot
• We Love Katamari OST – Heaven’s Rain
• Passenger 10 – The Mage
• Passenger 10 – Lembrancas
• Lack of Afro – The Outsider
• STP ft. Cellfunktion – Karma
• Tekken 5: DR OST – Snow Castle
• Cecile Bredie – The Autumn Leaves
• Luis Hermandez – To The Beach
• Donkey Kong Country OST – Aquatic Ambiance
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – This Velvet Glove
• Prefab Sprout – Moving The River (Acoustic)
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night OST – Crystal Teardrop
• James Taylor – Fire And Rain
• Andy Duguid fr. Leah – Don’t Belong (RaFa’s Out Of Key Reprise)
• Fastball – Out Of My Head
• Seal – Crazy
• The Eagles – Desperado
• Persona 4 Golden OST – Never More: I’ll Face Myself (Reincarnation Remix)
• Barenaked Ladies – Falling For The First Time
• Gundam Wing OST – Rhythm Emotion (Theme 2)
• Takeharu Ishimoto ft. Leah – Calling (1960’s Remix)
• Daughtry – September
• Yellowcard – Way Away
• Vanessa Carlton – A Thousand Miles (Acoustic)
• Feint – One Thousand Dreams
• Bond – Explosive
• Escala – Palladio
• Charlie Haden – Easy On The Heart
• DiDuLa – Arabica
• MFSB ft. The Three Degrees – T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)
• Moby – Bodyrock
• The Trammps – Disco Inferno
• Nina Simone – Sinnerman
• Boz Scaggs – Lowdown
• Little River Band – Reminiscing
• Carole King – So Far Away
• Matchbox 20 – How Far We’ve Come
• R. Master ft. Shiroku – God Knows (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Remix)
• Santana – Into The Night
• Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
• Donna Summer – MacArthur Park (Suite)
• Cynthia Harrell – I Am The Wind (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night OST)
• Mel Torme – Stardust
• Yu Yu Hakusho OST – The Homework Never Ends (Ending 1)
• Noel Gallagher – Wonderwall (The Dreams We Have As Children)
• Queen – Under Pressure (Wembley ’86)
• Yoko Kanno/The Seatbelts – Gotta Knock A Little Harder

Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Forever – Cherry Blossom Color Season

Pretty sure I’ve expounded on the virtues of the Katamari Damacy series a few times. Katamari Forever in particular is a treasure trove of eclectic remixes of songs seen in the older titles. “Cherry Blossom Color Season” hearkens back to the original game, which featured the same tune sung by a Japanese children’s choir. This version by Yuu Miyake not only has the vocals redone, but adds some acoustic guitar and a little Burt Bacharach-style brass into the mix. The result is a strange, but oddly relaxing piece of music.

If you want more Katamari, you can find a partial series OST playlist here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: We Love Katamari – Katamari On The Swing

Last week, I posted one of my favorite songs from the We Love Katamari soundtrack. Upon further listening, I realized that I’d completely overlooked “Katamari On The Swing.” Pretty sure no one was expecting swing music in a Japanese niche game. As the replacement for “Katamari On The Rocks” as the game’s main theme, it set the tone of the sequel perfectly: it was bigger, grander, and flashier in every way. Compare the original intro to the one in the sequel, for example. This track was so popular, it got its own synthesized remix in subsequent titles.

If you want more We Love Katamari, you can find the full OST here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: We Love Katamari – Heaven’s Rain

When Katamari Damacy became a sleeper hit in 2004, Namco decided to take the popularity and run with it. A year after the original game, We Love Katamari was released on the PS2. It’s one of the rare examples of a sequel improving on every aspect of its predecessor. The already bizarre narrative was made even more meta, stages were scaled up, there were hundreds of more interactive objects, challenges were more difficult to complete, and there was far more variety in terms of settings and visuals. You want to build a snowman? Try making one with a head the size of a house. On the game’s final stage, your katamari gradually grew from the size of a small animal to rolling up entire countries in the span of a few minutes. Seriously, check it out.

The soundtrack was greatly expanded as well. While the first game utilized mostly rock and jazz, We Love Katamari delved more into instrumentals, beatboxing, and techno tracks. “Heaven’s Rain” is one of the more relaxing songs in the game. The soothing vocals, accordion, and strings always made me want to just kick back and finish the stage at a slow pace…then the beats kicked in.

If you want more We Love Katamari, you can find the full OST here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Forever – Katamari On The Funk (Senor Coconut’s Katamambo! Remix)

If there’s any musical genre that was unexpected for the Katamari Damacy series, it was probably Mambo. But when the trailer for Katamari Forever debuted, this remix of the original Katamari On The Funk stole the show. It rounds out an already eclectic soundtrack with some powerful brass instrumentals and one of the most upbeat rhythms in the entire series. In a game that involves rolling the entire universe up into a gigantic sticky ball, you need a track like this to cheer you on.

If you want more Katamari Forever, you can find part of the OST here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Forever – Sayonara Rolling Star (Yuri’s Mix)

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned Katamari Damacy’s eclectic soundtrack before. In a game series where you roll up everything into a giant sticky ball, you’d think the music would be overshadowed the bizarreness. But with each successive title, the remixes and sampling became longer and more complex. This is especially evident in this song; in the original game, it was a mellow electronic tune called Lonely Rolling Star. In Beautiful Katamari, it was revamped as a pop song called Sayonara Rolling Star. In Katamari Forever, it was finally remixed from pop into disco. And it sounds awesome. Fun fact: the song is about lovers parting ways. Seriously.

If you want more Katamari Forever, you can find part of the OST here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Damacy – Katamaritaino (Roll Me In)

I think I’ve mentioned how Katamari Damacy possesses one of the best and most varied soundtracks in video gaming. Katamaritaino is one of its most underrated entries. In a game where your goal is to roll up flowers, trees, animals, people, cars, buildings, cities, mountains, countries, continents, planets, moons, and the entire galaxy into a gigantic sticky ball, some smooth Japanese jazz is strangely appropriate.

If you want more Katamari (and believe me, you do), you can find the first game’s full playlist here.

Good gaming, good music.

Soundtrack Saturdays: Katamari Damacy – Katamari On The Rocks

In 2004, a very strange game was released for the PS2. Katamari Damacy had a simple premise: Use a giant sticky ball to roll up literally everything in your path. The more you rolled up, the bigger your ball would become. Lint, paper clips, clothes, people, animals, furniture, walls, cars, trees, buildings, cities, islands, countries, planets, moons, stars, galaxies…everything. The scale just kept growing and growing, and everything you picked up changed the physics of the ball itself. Your efforts were overseen by the oh-so flamboyant King Of All Cosmos.

Yes, it was very strange indeed.

But popular too; this bizarre little game became a sleeper hit and launched one of Namco’s finest franchises. It was greatly helped by its incredible soundtrack, an eclectic mix of J-pop, rock, jazz, and lounge…and that’s not even getting into the plethora of remixes in the sequels. Katamari on the Rocks was its main theme, and its catchy insanity became a cult classic in the video game world.

If you want to get more Katamari (and I highly recommend you do), you can find the rest of the OST here.

Good gaming, good music. Nana-nananana-nana-nanana…

Daily Prompt: A Bird, a Plane, You!, Or: This Is Heavy, Doc!

Hey, folks. Today’s Daily Prompt is about power. Specifically, choosing one of three superpowers provided:

• The ability to speak and understand any language
• The ability to travel through time
• The ability to make any two people agree with each other

Now, I’ve established that I’m pretty geeky, so of course questions like this are nothing new. The concept of superpowers is ancient; a cursory glance of any major battle in Homer’s epics will reveal quite a bit. When I was a kid, it always came down to Achilles’ Nigh Invulnerability versus Odysseus’ cunning. Cunning isn’t technically a superpower, but being able to outsmart gods is undeniably awesome. But since wisdom and strategy are part of Athena’s domain, she’s probably my first favorite superhero…

Going on a tangent. Sorry.

Anyway, so this debate focuses on the three aforementioned powers. I can dismiss the third one outright, because making two people agree doesn’t exactly solve the inherent issues of a disagreement. The implication of this power is that you use some kind of psychic ability to mess with people’s brains, essentially forcing them to do something. It really boils down to individual morality versus necessity; if you need to mentally force people to agree, then what does that portend for the future of civilization? Look what happened to Rohan in Lord of the Rings. I don’t know about you, but I like having free will and memories. Hey, remember when ? Remember when she mind-wiped Batman in an attempt to cover it up? Yeah, that didn’t have any negative consequences whatsoever…oh wait.

I’m sorely tempted to go with the first one, simply because I really enjoy learning languages. I spend a lot of time using free online resources like DuoLingo and Open Culture. If The King of All Cosmos can speak Esperanto, then so can I! What’s cool about speaking any language is that it’s not limited to verbal communication. Taken a step further, universal translation also applies to technology. You ever take a course in C++? BASIC? Congratulations, you know a programming language. How about body language? Music? Symbols? R’lyehian? You might want to save that last one for a special occasion. There’s a lot of opportunities to be had, and being able to communicate is a more civil method of diplomacy than, you know, mind-wiping naysayers.

However, I have to go with time travel. If you have all the time in the world, you can develop universal translation on your own! Yeah, it’s a lot of studying, but at least you won’t have to sacrifice the ability to bend the fabric of reality. You have enough time to do, learn, and create anything you want. The sky isn’t even the limit; develop technology over the centuries and discover interstellar flight! It’s all there for the taking. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, though. There are a lot of problems associated with time travel, usually due to individual choices and hubris. Remember what happened in Back to the Future? Marty McFly nearly erased himself from existence, and accidentally re-wrote a bunch of other stuff! Or how about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, who used her powers to avoid problems and drastically altered the fates of everyone around her? Doctor Who is all about why time travel is so ridiculously awesome and dangerous at the same time. Then there are all the questions brought up with multiverse theory, which is even messier. Time travel is the best of these three powers, but it requires unparalleled responsibility and foresight. I don’t think I – or anyone else, for that matter – could use it perfectly.

But I’d sure like to try.