The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild stars, constellations, and the Moon, which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos.

Katamari Damacy's story, settings and characters are highly stylized and surreal, often both celebrating and satirizing facets of Japanese culture.

Its success led to the creation of the greater Katamari franchise, and inspired numerous subsequent games imitating its quirky, colorful charm.

Some critics have hailed it as a cult classic and one of the greatest video games of all time, praising its gameplay, replay value, humor, originality, and Shibuya-kei soundtrack.

A high-definition remaster of the game, Katamari Damacy Reroll,[b] was released on Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2020, and on Google Stadia in September 2021.

Despite acknowledging his mistake, the King charges his five-centimeter-tall son, the Prince, to go to Earth with a "katamari"—a magical ball that allows anything smaller than it to stick to it and make it grow—and collect enough material for him to recreate the stars and the Moon.

The father, an astronaut, is unable to go to the Moon after it is wiped out by the King, and the daughter, whose name is Michiru, "senses" the Prince's work—she can feel when each constellation returns to the sky.

[2] The player controls the Prince as he rolls the katamari around houses, gardens, and towns in order to meet certain parameters set by the King of All Cosmos.

Other controls can be triggered by the player to gain a quick burst of speed, flip the Prince to the other side of the katamari and more.

[1] The typical mission given by the King of All Cosmos is the "Make a Star" mode, where the player needs to grow the katamari to a specific size within a given time frame.

[2] The player can attempt a score attack mode for any level, where the goal is to make the largest katamari possible in the time allotted.

After graduation, Takahashi no longer had the desire to pursue sculpting as a full-time career, and saw the potential to become involved in video games as a means to continue his art interest in a larger medium.

Takahashi felt this would lead to interesting and creative gameplay, allowing the player to create havoc as the Prince followed the misguided suggestions from the King, but the project leader rejected the idea.

The next day, he spoke to his former boss, Mitsutoshi Ozaki, about the concept, further adding a way to reuse the King and Prince characters he had previously proposed, who also agreed it would make for a great game.

Alongside about ten students from the Digital Hollywood program, he had been able to gain some visual design artists from Namco to help with the prototype but had difficulty in getting any game development engineers, due to the low priority of the school.

At the time the project started, Sony had just announced the specifications for the console, which was built from the ground-up to support 3D graphics via the Emotion Engine.

Thus, Takahashi's team decided to develop for the GameCube for their prototype even though the final game was expected to be a PlayStation 2 release.

[10][11] The music in Katamari Damacy was widely hailed as imaginative and original (winning both IGN's[12] and GameSpot's[13] "Soundtrack of the Year 2004" awards) and was considered one of the game's best features.

Its eclectic composition featured elements of traditional electronic video game music, as well as heavy jazz and samba influences (Shibuya-kei).

Most of the tracks were composed by Yuu Miyake, and many feature vocals from popular J-pop singers, such as Yui Asaka from the Sukeban Deka 3 TV series, and anime voice actors, including Nobue Matsubara and Ado Mizumori.

The demo was critically praised by the press, with GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann describing it as a "good dose of weird fun".

Sony advertised the game on numerous billboards and posters across Japan, and created an infamous television ad of a businessman, waiting for an appointment, rolling up office furniture and staff.

Katamari Damacy was first shown in the United States at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop during the March 2004 Game Developers Conference.

Discovering Katamari Damacy as an ideal title to exhibit, the group arranged with Namco to have Takahashi come to the United States to present the game.

In North America the game was acclaimed by critics, and was mentioned and praised on TechTV, and was a featured sidebar in the May 2004 edition of Time magazine.

[34] Most retailers underestimated the demand for such a quirky game, and only purchased a few copies of this sleeper hit; it rapidly sold out nationwide, with sales surpassing 120,000 units in North America.

Though sharing the same mechanics, We Love Katamari introduces new gameplay features, such as co-operative play, and new goals, such as collecting the most valuable objects, that would continue through its sequels.

On July 29, 2012, the game was included in an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art, entitled "Century of the Child: Growing by Design".

Curator Paola Antonelli selected Katamari Damacy among the first fourteen games to be displayed in the museum, which was chosen according to a variety of criteria, including "visual quality, elegance of the code and design of playing behavior".

[48][49] A high-definition remaster of the game made with Unity, titled Katamari Damacy Reroll, was released on the Nintendo Switch and Windows on December 7, 2018.