Attendees of London’s Fringe Festival were in for a major treat. They got to play Katamari Damacy using a life-sized rolling controller! The whole thing was documented by creator Chris McInnis on the blog Uber Cool Stuff (very fitting name!). It’s a great piece of DIY nerdistry and it looks like a blast! Be sure to check out the video at the bottom of the page!
McInnis and his collaborators used the guts of a Dualshock 2, an Arduino controller, a ball and a wooden frame to make the Katamari ball. The design is ingenious, and it appears to work very well.
I want one in my living room. So, so, so badly.
The process, and the awesome event is documented in the blog post:
I knew I wanted to do something related to the game for Nuit Blanche, and after discovering videos by Eric Gradman and Kellbot, I was convinced I could make it happen. I needed help, though, and luckily I found two great guys who had the technical know-ho to make the vision a reality. Ron LeBlanc is might be somewhat familiar to friends of the store as the guy who built the awesome Ubercade. Tom was a friend of a friend, and his willingness to jump into a crazy project at the last-minute really saved the day.
So I dusted off my woodworking skills and built a frame for the giant Katamari, while Ron began hacking the Playstation controller to accept input the two optical mice in place of the PS2 thumbsticks. Tom’s electronics and coding know-how finished it off and we were (almost) ready to roll.
Katamari Damacy was like nothing seen before, when it came out for the PS2 in 2004. It put you in control of the Prince, whose father the King of the Cosmos had destroyed the stars in the sky. The prince is sent to earth to make new stars out of Katamaris, ever-expanding balls of ….. well, everything that you roll through strange cartoon landscapes using the Dualshock’s double analog sticks. The art style of the game was strangely beautiful and it was full of humor. But the soundtrack, done by lots of JapaneseDJs and experimental musicians, is one of the best any game has ever had.
There have been spin offs on both of Sony’s handhelds as well as Xbox 360 and PS3 iterations, but this looks like the best version yet. Check out the video below!
[Via: Uber Cool Stuff]