Keita Takahashi

Lore & Background

Takahashi entered the Musashino Art University to study sculpting in 1995. After graduating he had lost interest in sculpting as a full-time career and pivoted to video games instead. He joined Namco as an artist around 1999 and started working on multiple smaller projects. While working at Namco, Takahashi was thinking of original game ideas, but unable to pitch them due to him being in the art department.

He eventually joined the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory, a game design academy run by Namco. He recruited nearly a dozen of its students alongside a few programmers and visual designers from elsewhere inside the company. The prototype of Katamari took six months to develop and led to Namco green lighting the game's full development. After one and a half years of development Katamari Damacy released on March 18, 2004, for the PlayStation 2.

The game was a surprise hit and quickly developed a cult following over the years. Katamari Damacy Reroll, a high-definition remastered version of the game, was released in December 2018. In a 2023 interview Takahashi said he isn't receiving any royalties from the sales of Katamari games. The popularity of Katamari came as a surprise to Takahashi as well as his employer.

He strongly opposed the idea of a sequel. After he found out that development on a continuation of Katamari was already underway, Namco informed him they would develop a sequel with or without him. Takahashi decided to take part in the development process once again because he 'didn't want players to be disappointed'. We Love Katamari released on June 7, 2005.

The game is self-referential about being a game as well as a sequel. On February 19, 2009 Noby Noby Boy was released. The game was published by Bandai Namco and designed by Takahashi. In Noby Noby Boy players were able to collect points and help a separate character travel through the Solar System.

The game's goal was shared by all players and was cumulatively reached after more than six years. In a 2005 interview, just after the release of We Love Katamari, Takahashi announced that he hopes to eventually move on from video games, with an ambition of designing playgrounds for children. He believes children should spend less time in the virtual world and more time in the physical world.

Reader's Guide

Keita Takahashi is best known for creating the Katamari franchise. He directed and led design on Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari. After leaving Namco, he co-founded Uvula in October 2010 with his wife Asuka Sakai. He later worked on Noby Noby Boy, Glitch, Wattam, Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, and to a T.