Concept Art

Early character designs[]

Not many images of character concept art has resurfaced. The King's early design shows him with ears on the sides of his head and with nostrils under his nose. The only mainline cousins with a possible concept designs that has been shown are for Fujio, Shikao and Mu. His beta design can be seen inside of the Katamari Wa Damacy album pamphlet. This Mu design shows him with bug-like limbs, a longer antenna, and only three eyes. Cousin from Namco High has the most concept designs that are publicly available, with a total of 12 different concept designs.

Characters[]

Namco High[]

Prototypes[]

Action Drive[]

Like every other game, Katamari had concept art to test how the game would play, or which art style would fit the world of the game better. In an ongoing Twitter thread, Keita Takahashi shared some concept art for Katamari and explained what the original idea for the game was, as well as the origins of some concepts.

Originally, the King, Prince, and Queen were part of a project code-named Action Drive. The original story involved the Queen being kidnapped by crazy scientists. The King wishes to rescue her, but thanks to his laziness, he doesn't want to do it himself. Instead, he opts to send his son, the Prince, to do it instead. Since the Prince is so small, getting around to search is a hassle for him. To make things easier, he decides 'human jacking' would be the best option. Gameplay would have involved using his hammer head to stun humans before putting a magic controller into their head to control them, making the search for the Queen much more efficient. The project was turned down, but Keita decided to reuse the designs he made for Katamari Damacy later on.