People who played games from a young age often don’t really understand how difficult games are. You do actually have to learn how to play them, and having spent time with adults that didn’t grow up playing them trying to adjust to using dual analogue stick controllers, it’s interesting to watch them figure out how to move about in 3D spaces. Thankfully, there’s a type of games that I like to call gateway games that often help people understand games as a whole.
These can come in a lot of different forms: while potentially difficult for those that struggle with 3D games, games like Uncharted are a good introduction because they’re familiar, many people have watched Indiana Jones after all, and the “cinematic” vibe is something that could easily acclimate a newcomer. Then you have games on consoles like the Wii, with simple, intuitive motion controls that anyone can play, or 2D platformers which often amount to just, left, right, up, down, and jump (I am being reductive, I know, you don’t have to leave a comment). And then, there’s games like Katamari Damacy.
It’s Katamari Damacy’s birthday today, celebrating 20 whole years of existence, a game that was incredibly fresh when it arrived, and still stands out from the crowd even now all these years later. I think it is also an impossible game to describe to someone that doesn’t really play games. In it, you play as a tiny Prince, who must use his Katamari, which is basically one of those spiky balls you put in the tumble dryer, to roll up anything and everything, then turn that into stars and planets, all because your dad, the King of all Cosmos, let loose a little bit too hard and destroyed most of our galaxy. Not the most approachable of games, methinks, and this is coming from one of the biggest Kingdom Hearts fans around.
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