December 17^th, 2004 (4:16pm) - Pining for another game where you roll up big balls of stuff to repopulate the cosmos your father so drunkenly destroyed? Well, Namco has released new details on the sequel to Katamari Damacy entitled Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy (Everyone Loves Katamari Damacy).

The game will play the same way as the first. You’ll be controlling an ever growing ball of stuff with both analog sticks, though this time the story has changed.

The King of the Cosmos has received requests from his fans to cause panic among the people of Earth, so in order to bolster the size of his fan base he sends you terrorize the planet.

New levels include fairy-tale like candy land whose houses are made of chocolate and candy, a school, a zoo, and a raceway, all with the details you’d expect like students, animals, and motorcycles.

The stages will also offer more goals for the players to complete. In the original, your primary goal in the stages was to make your katamari as big as possible within a time limit, but this time around you’ll be asked to pick up a fixed number of items. Your goal will be to try and get as big as possible without exceeding the item limit. Other conditions include making your katamari as big as possible by collecting only a specified item or building up your katamari to an exact size.

The game is around 30% complete and due for release in Japan this Spring. The screen shots don’t look much different (see below) but that’s not a bad thing.