Oh!
Oh yes!
You bought the game! You thought it wise to play beyond the measly demo!
We are so proud of you, little player. We hope that you will have a gentle transition to becoming a full-fledged fan. You might even get to meet us in person. Wouldn't that be cool? We could go out and have ice cream with macadamia nuts in the sunset, then you could selfishly ask us to clean your room katamari-style. Then we'd cry.
But we digress, you're here to read about our little pony, aren't you? Yes, you are. Very well. We'll go into narrative mode for you now. We've been practicing since we last met you. We think that you'll be impressed.
We also seem worth it to note that, after a long investigation, we can safety deduce that the rainbow pony is a girl. We just wanted to make sure before we assumed, because assuming things can be quite rude.
Ahem.
As soon as we saw the pony's pink ball fade into space, we sat back in our throne and clapped our hands to summon a seventy-two inch plasma TV screen in front of our face. It was a little small, as we couldn't have all of our attention focused on our prince's exploits. Kings still have to do kingly things, unfortunately.
The pink ball flickered into view, and we could see our Prince clinging to its side, his eyes squinted shut. The pony was being tossed about, her wings and fur ruffling as her body smashed into her ship's curved sides. It made her look like she had been placed in a drier, fluffy and static-y.
Her mane was no longer that neat, pretty rainbow, but a tangle of messy colors that looked quite unseemly. Such a cacophony of hues would have looked beautiful on a katamari, but on a cute pony it just looked sad.
We decided to fix that. Reaching up, we placed a single finger to our screen.
"Pony, do you hear us?" we asked. We have a knack for tapping into the brains of simple creatures. How do you think that we're able to talk to the Prince so easily?
From the screen, the pony stiffened and looked around. "Wha... What the heck?!" she cried.
"We asked if you could hear us."
She planted her hooves to the sides of her head, grinding at her skull. "You're in my brain!"
"Naturally." We would have smiled it that were anatomically possible. "We were wondering if, during your journey back to your planet, we could play hairdresser on you?"
Even from the graininess of the screen we could see what looked like a frown on the pony's muzzle. "Go ahead and try. I dare you! You're like, light years away by now!" She turned to some random direction and shook her hoof like it was a fist.
She must have been quite shy, and that made us want to make her look extra special.
After a few seconds of mental sculpting (loading, as you peasants call it), the pony's mane erupted into a tidy pompadour. The stripes of colors were neatened out, smoothed to perfection and puffed up in a more traditional style, with the tumbling curls in the back.
The pony's eyes strained to look up at it, her mouth opening in a little 'o' of surprise as she gazed back into space. "What is this?" she asked loudly. "It's like something a pony from Prance would wear..."
"Do you like it?" we asked. "We used to have a pompadour once. It let us get all the ladies, but don't tell the Queen that." We shuddered at the thought.
"There are more of you?" the pony asked, her eyes bugging out.
We thought about that question very carefully, our hand stroking our perfect stubble. "There are three members of the immediate royal family, that being ourselves, our Queen, and our Prince. Would you also like to count the Prince's fifty-seven cousins?" we said.
The pony didn't say anything, rather she just stared ahead. "Okay... now what's that crunching noise?"
"The level is loading. It means that you're close." That was a stupid question, but we didn't tell her that.
"Oh... so I'm almost home? Great." She looked tired. Poor thing. We would be tired too if we were forced to look so cute all the time.
On the opposite side, the Prince had never looked more eager. It made us quite proud to be seeing him so motivated. Were we even bored twenty minutes ago? We can't even remember.
From the glow of the TV screen, we could see a little blue and green dot blink into view. That must have been it. That was the pony's world. It looked a lot like Earth, but we knew that it probably wasn't. Underneath that false exterior was a world of ponies. It made us tap our fingers to our arm rest in impatience.
The dot grew larger, enveloping the screen as the pony's ball broke through its atmosphere, charging down into unknown territory. The Prince held on tightly, his eyes squinting as a funnel of swishing air coned around the orb.
Underneath the roar of the wind we could hear the pony screaming quite loudly, and we wondered why she would bother wasting her voice like that. It seemed very counterproductive.
Eventually, after much falling the ball crashed into the ground, bobbing up and down as if were splashing through a sea of dirt. It rolled off a few yards and stopped, with the Prince sliding off the side to the ground below. What a slacker.
The little pony, perfect pompadour and all, slumped down to her chest, her hooves sprawled out so that she looked like a fluffy spider. Her eyes were closed, but we knew that she wasn't dead. That would be a silly assumption.
Where they had fallen, or at least what I could see was nothing more than a grassy green field, with not even a set of cows to sprinkle over the surface. Pretty boring. Not fit for a katamari at all.
But then the Prince jumped up and pointed. Our view panned to the left, and we saw something wonderful.
A farm.
An orchard, we should say! The perfect place to roll! The ideal place to breed a pure 'rustic' katamari!
The Prince looked towards our screen and nodded sagely. We rose a hand to our cheek to wipe away a tear. He understood. He had grown so much.
After a few more moments of proper cutscene drama we turned to the pony, still asleep, and urged our Prince to roll her hamster ball to the farm's edge. He did so ceremoniously, with slow, deliberate 'rolling' movements.
The pony woke up, but did not move. Her eyes widened at the sight of the approaching farmland. "Sweet Apple Acres?" she said.
"Is that the name of that place?" we asked. "Does it have cute ponies too?"
She ignored us. "Why are you taking me there?" She shakily stumbled to her hooves and walked along with the rolling ball. "At least let me get out of here..."
To right a wrong, we ignored her comment entirely. "We're taking you there because that's going to be the tutorial level!"
The pony snorted. "I'm sorry, what?"
We felt something crawl up our hand. It was probably one of the Prince's cousins, but for the moment we paid it no mind. "Because your leader thinks that we're a nuisance; we're going to prove her wrong by helping to better your society. Simply putting it, we're going to ask a fan if they need any help, then we're going to fulfill their request through rolling katamaris!" We spread our arms in a final flourish, and a blossom of rainbows exploded from our back.
A hideous squeaking erupted from our hand, and we looked down to find Cousin Ichigo staring up at us, her little red and black body bouncing up and down. The pony was saying something, but we weren't listening to her.
"Oh, Ichigo?" we asked. "What are you doing here? We thought you had wandered off again... did you want to play the role of the fan for the tutorial?"
Ichigo smiled and clapped her hands, then pointed to our screen and babbled something.
"Oh! You want us to try and find some strawberries for you? Brilliant! Your timing could not be better!"
We looked to the screen. The Prince was regarding us with a questioning stare. He had parked the makeshift katamari right in front of the farm's gate. It was a perfect starting point.
"Prince!" we called, and he flinched. "No time limit. You'll need to collect twenty strawberries for Ichigo and roll to a minimum of 4m." Such objectives could not be easier.
The pony followed the Prince's gaze and looked right at us. "Look, I dunno what you guys are talking about, but you can roll around Applejack's place all you want as long as you let me out, okay?" She raised a hoof to rub at her eyelids. "Ugh, the air is getting so stale in here."
We felt a pang of pity for the pony, but that might have merely been the dodgy tiramisu that the Queen baked for us. In our heart, we knew that the proper act of kindness would be to negotiate a proper deal. "So you're giving us permission to roll in this 'Applejack's' farm?" we asked.
"Yeah. Sure. Whatever gets me out of here!" the pony cried, clopping its hoof against rounded sides of her ship. How did she get inside in the first place?
No matter. The deal was sealed. The Prince scuttled over and undid the latch to the ball, and the pony weakly stumbled out onto solid ground.
"Thanks." she said.
"We had a deal, after all" we replied. "Now, Prince?"
The Prince grinned and placed himself behind the ball, so much bigger than himself.
The tutorial was about to begin. Now you, little fan, will have to wait for it to load. We're deeply sorry, but what did you expect for a budget title like this?
