Considered by many to be the most innovative video game of 2004, Katamari Damacy was an extremely simple game full of charm and wonder. The basic idea is you roll a ball (or katamari) around the level—say, a cluttered living room—and pick up stuff lying around, like erasers or paper clips. Slowly but surely, your katamari gets bigger and bigger until you can start picking up larger items—a pencil, a remote control, a coffee cup, the cat—until you get big enough to leave the living room and start rolling around the town, picking up bicycles, mailboxes, people… the list goes on. At the end, your katamari becomes a star based on how big you get it. Surrounding this basic premise is a wealth of oddities: you’re rolling up stars because your father, the King of All Cosmos, got drunk one night and smashed all the stars in the sky. There’s a side story about a Japanese family trying to figure out where all the stars have gone. There’s a level where your sole goal is to roll up as many crabs as possible. It’s a quirky, cute game that’s won the hearts of many. And a lot of that has to do with the original music created for the game—bright, cheery and perfectly in tune with the game’s content.

The sequel, We Love Katamari, has recently been released in the States, and the Japanese have had it for several months (under the name Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy—loosely translated, it means Everybody Loves Katamari Damacy). In addition to new levels that match the quirkiness of the original (one level has you “demolishing” a gingerbread house by rolling up all the candy parts), there’s a new soundtrack. To go along with the new zoo level, the wizards at Namco penned “Scorching Savanna.” Basically, it’s a five minute medley of the original Katamari Damacy tracks—as sung by zoo animals. Yes, it’s as awesome as it reads on paper.