I *heart* Katamari *heart*s iPhone

click to open iTunes

Namco's net ninjas have silently slipped an iPhone version of Katamari Damacy (fittingly renamed i Love Katamari – lower-case "i") onto the iTunes App Store (clicking opens iTunes). The latest portable version of the eccentric action game is being sold for $7.99 and, as you'd expect, is mainly controlled using the accelerometer inside the iPhone and iPod Touch. We downloaded the game to take it for a spin tilt.

Apart from some weird hiccups (we wouldn't call them framerate problems since the game, well, freezes momentarily) and some early wrangling with the controls (tilt is used for turning and forwards/backwards movement, touching the left or right side of the screen "strafes") we found it to be an enjoyable pint-sized packaging of one of our favorite games. The art style is well suited to iPhone / iPod Touch – as is its overall pick-up-and-play-anytime nature. Hopefully Namco will push out an update soon to address the initial bugs, and iPhone can continue being "the future of gameplay" in the meantime.