Katamari Damacy meets Day of the Dead, care of Nicolas Caesar Scary-Art.com (thanks, brian). Can we call him Prince of All Dying Stars? Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
DS Fanboy Lite: Feb. 23 - Feb. 29
Joystiq interview: Crystal Dynamics' Lindstrom talks Tomb Raider: Underworld
Joystiq Podcast 039 - Leap year edition
Metareview: Patapon (PSP)
This Week in DLC: Sucking up Triggerheart Exelica

News
Ironclad's Sins sells more than 100,000 in less than a month
SCi plans radical restructuring with mass layoffs and project cancellations
Call of Duty 4 feature patch is now live
See the Battlefield Heroes debut trailer
GDC08: First screenshots of Mirror's Edge
Eidos returns to open water with Battlestations: Pacific
Borders Books testing game sales in London
Trism brings tilt-sensitive puzzle gaming to iPhone
Rock Band Weekly: Grateful Dead six-pack
Sony reveals Home integration for Resistance, Uncharted, Warhawk
Pong creator Nolan Bushnell working on MMO
Take-Two: More companies want to buy us
US/Euro MGS4 lacks Japanese voice over tracks
Rocketmen blast off onto XBLA, PSN next week
Major League Eating crammed into WiiWare
Future Futurama flick features extra Xbox episode
Voice of Marcus Fenix talks Gears of War 2
Street Fighter IV test machines in Japan, features Sagat and Balrog
Former EA exec: Kotick's WoW remark meant to scare competition

Rumors & Speculation
Rumor: Lost Odyssey sequels on the way

Culture & Community
GDC '08 breaks attendance record, press may need invite next year
Game Developers Choice Awards on G4 tonight
Jason Ocampo leaves Gamespot for IGN

Microsoft Europe's Xbox community manager Graeme Boyd dropped a "wee" note on his blog this morning to let everyone know that only Xbox Live Silver members can download the Beautiful Katamari demo (released in Europe, Australia and New Zealand just yesterday). Yep, you paying folk will have to wait.

Boyd assures us that the situation will soon be resolved (maybe it already is), meaning, Gold members will get the exclusive access they've been promised, and Silver members will be back on the outside looking in. But, for the moment, all you freeloaders should revel in this brief episode of trading places.

It seems that Katamari Damacy continues to roll on, inspiring imitators and homages long after the original title's release. This time, it seem everyone's favorite clump of souls has rolled onto cable television, with the Cartoon Network program Chowder presenting an extended Katamari-esque sequence involving a rather large piece of bubblegum.

Chowder is the latest in a long line of original Cartoon Network animated shows, created by the mind behind Spongebob Squarepants and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. The show is about an apprentice cook named Chowder. In fact, every character is named after food. There's a girl named Panini. Panini. We think that's just awesome.

[Thanks, Mark]

Notebooks, silverware, copper bowls, bowling pins, dishes, Pocky and Milky boxes, clothes pins, yarn balls, cakes, barrels, milk crates, cats and dogs, farm animals, giant mushroom, kitchen table, shrubs, flowers, trees, a giraffe and a van. These are all the objects to be "rolled up" in Jenne Maneri's wonderful Katamari model. There are plenty more pictures at her website. Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
Joystiq visits Harmonix to talk Rock Band DLC and incidentals
Metareview: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)3
Metareview: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)
Nega-review: Crysis
Today's Segway one-upping video: Personal Yoshi
Wii Fanboy Weekly: November 7th, 2007 - November 14th, 2007

News
Atari CEO resigns as company exits game development
See new World of Warcraft patch trailer
2K Games: No Bioshock on PS3; stop asking
TimeShift gets multiplayer demo on Xbox Live
DualShock 3 rumble works with PS2 games
Nintendo disputes WiiWare limitations
Variety says Mario Galaxy shows Wii's weaknesses
Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk getting in-game ad treatment
Xbox Originals are not without issues
BBC reminds that Wii supply is still an issue
Class action lawsuit over Xbox Live consumer fraud
Overline gives Wii owners "The Shaft"
Fallout sale to help fund Earthworm Jim, Descent comebacks
Cyanide confirms Blood Bowl for Xbox 360, PSP, DS
Dutch teen arrested for stealing virtual furniture
Mad Catz purrchases Saitek, Joystiq shoots headline author
Guitar Hero III PC/Mac hybrid 'later this year'
Rock Band DLC priced! Cheaper than Guitar Hero's, more choice
Mass Effect banned in Singapore over lesbian scene

Culture & Community
Bungie's Weinland and Cowan to keynote Game Design Expo
See the 10 most expensive video games
Zero Punctuation hates Jericho

[Thanks, JP]

Ever the eccentric, Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi went on stage at a video game conference and tried to tell the audience that video games are NOT the most important thing in the world.

We couldn't believe it either.

Standing barefoot in front of London Nottingham's GameCity conference, the obviously brain-damaged Takahashi alleged that "it would be impossible for us to be here... if the world was not peaceful." He tried to convince the crowd that real world suffering and problems were occasionally more pressing than games. "If you're suffering from poverty and disease, could you worry about collecting coins? I don't think so," he argued, unconvincingly.

Takahashi also implied, rather laughably, that things like recycling and being friendly were just as important as beating Halo 3 on Legendary for the third time. "I'm not trying to be the next Al Gore but I'm not sure if we could afford to have video games in ten or twenty year's time," the fearmongering designer said, adding that white is black and up is actually down.

After the confusing opening, Takahashi showed off a demo of Nobi Nobi Boy, thankfully distracting the audience from the problems of the real world once again.

Hoping that the Japanese have a better sense of humor than their American counterparts, EA has released a trailer featuring the previously-discussed "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Land" section of The Simpsons Game, which parodies Japanese culture as well as (apparently) Japanese video games.

Pardon the parentheticals, but the only game we see spoofed in this trailer is Katamari Damacy. Yes, we see Mr. Sparkle; We see the anime-inspired cutscene; We (unfortunately) hear the high-pitched "engrish"; But where are the games? Are we missing something obvious?

Take a look for yourselves after the break, and please enlighten us.

Sometimes a checkbook, a life-sized model, a shirt, a Play-Doh model, a Lego version or even Catamari isn't enough. Sometimes you need the real deal, the mainline Katamari. Your Xbox Live dealer has prepared a hit just for you on Xbox Live with a new demo: Just remember, only the first one's free.

If you're among the uninitiated (and if you're solely a 360 gamer, there's a good chance you are) prepare for ... well, for insanity that you control with two sticks. If you try to figure it out, your brain's going to sprain it's ankle, so just roll with it. ... Do you get it? Roll. It's funny. Cause it's a ball.

Still playing is-it-or-isn't-it-an-exclusive, (hey, can you spare $50 million?), Beautiful Katamari's opening sequence has surfaced on GameTrailers. Having finished the other, less beautiful Katamari games, our joy in seeing the introduction video wasn't as great as we imagine a virgin Katamari player's amazement. And with this title landing on the 360, we expect a lot of gamers will be introduced to the delightfully quirky franchise with Beautiful.

See the opening video after the break, or rock it in HD directly from GameTrailers.

Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi will give a keynote address at this year's GameCity festival in Nottingham, England. According to GI.biz, Takahashi will also be showing off his upcoming title Nobi Nobi Boy.

Takahashi's keynote will take place Saturday, October 27. Festival participants include Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Freestyle Games, Travellers Tales, Free Radical Design, Mode 7 and Frontier; more details are expected shortly. The second annual GameCity festival will be held October 24 through 28 at Nottingham Trent University.

Should PS3 fans be sad about the loss of Katamari Damacy on their system? Not necessarily. Keita Takahashi – creator of the famed rolling series, ostensibly on a break from playground design – has just debuted a new game for the PS3: Nobi Nobi Boy. Considering "nobi" means "stretch" in Japanese, we can probably expect a game that does for stretching what Katamari did for rolling.

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

Rumors surfaced over the last couple of weeks about Beautiful Katamari rolling itself away from PlayStation 3 and towards Nintendo Wii. An Xbox 360 version, already weighted its own speculation, is the only confirmed version to be shown at next week's E3.

Now comes word that Famitsu (via PS3 Center) has validated the rumors and that Namco Bandai has indeed quietly canceled a PS3 iteration in favor of rolling the Prince of All Cosmos onto the Wii. As we have yet to see the purported issue of Famitsu, we're still labeling this as rumor fodder.

We've contacted Namco Bandai for a statement. In the meantime, take a stroll down memory lane with our recent b[ack]log on We Love Katamari.

[Via Evil Avatar]

German magazine Maniac! is reporting the student demo project De Blob will be making its way to the Wii sometime next year. The Katamari-inspired game (which PC users can download for free) puts you in control of a squidgy blob rolling around the city painting the buildings different colors. It's a simple 3D game that unfortunately has some hefty system requirements, but it's free, and it's quite a bit of fun. Blue Tongue Entertainment is working on the Wii port and THQ will publish the title in 2008.

[Via Go Nintendo]

Well, the title seemed sort of clever at the time. "The B[ack]log" represents one gamer's fight against that seemingly insurmountable and entirely self-inflicted obstacle, the ever-sprawling backlog of games that are either unfinished, unplayed or unloved. That's the "Backlog" part. After surgically inserting some brackets, it becomes "B[ack]log," a reference to both the blog format and the unique sound emitted whenever I view the stack of games I keep adding to every month. And every week, I hope to subtract at least one and ramble about it for a few paragraphs... if you don't mind. A review this is not.

It seems simultaneously appropriate and depressing then, that the first game to be ejected and examined (and then ejected again) is one primarily concerned with hoarding as much stuff as you possibly can -- We Love Katamari for the PlayStation 2.

The Prince of All Cosmos sporting his Katamari music player, found by Flickr user nuzz -- "not my doing, but hilarious," he writes. We didn't fare too much better in our admittedly brief search, but we did stumble upon an iRoll button with a similar image. It's green like Xbox, but that's probably just a coincidence. Check out the highlights for the weekend:

Joystiquery
Podcast Rodeo for June 24: E.A.R.
Today's chowiest video: John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat in Stranglehold
Today's shootingest video: Quake Wars
Weekly Webcomic Wrapup: winning formula edition

News
Dale Earnhardt Jr. signs endorsement contract with Sony
New Time Crisis 4 screenshots, Guncon 3 pics
Sonic the Hedgehog turns 16
Devil May Cry anime hits the web
Jaffe's warehouse pics possible studio space in Utah
Austin Powers available free on Xbox Live
Chun Li cries the pain of loss away
Boston Globe: Wii puts violence in motion
Blue Dragon ad campaign wins Cannes award
DS games at Toys R Us are buy 2 get 1 free this week
The Darkness delayed for Euro PS3 until July 20
Metroid Prime 3 details emerge from Play magazine
Addiction experts: Video games aren't an addiction

Rumors & Speculation
Manhunt 2 controversy may boost sales

Culture & Community
Postal designer speaks out on Manhunt 2 bans
The anomaly of Nancy Drew games
Gamespot changes review system, adds 'medals'
DIY pixel art T-shirts

Gamespot has retracted all mention that Beautiful Katamari will release on Xbox Live Arcade and "regrets the error." Screw-up or cover-up? You decide. Gamespot now says that the game will be released as a "full retail package and not a download." Gamespot is typically on the ball, it's very out of character for them to just make a major statement like Beautiful Katamari would be on XBLA without reason.

Beautiful Katamari has had a very odd public trip so far. First it popped up when Orange Lounge Radio discovered it in retail computers. Then Namco Bandai strong-armed the independent podcast to pull the story, but then the game also ended up on GameFly with a fall release. Then it was confirmed for all systems and finally became a possible Xbox 360 exclusive, which led to the XBLA announcement. Heck, we've still got another four months or so before the game comes out, what other things can be picked up in this beautiful katamari of crazy gaming news?