also presented the game for an internal review, leading Namco to green light the game's full development. Full work on Katamari Damacy began in late 2001. Namco assigned Now Production, based in Osaka, to help bring the game to the PlayStation 2. Takahashi was initially concerned about having to work with an external studio in a different location, but found that the Namco and Now Production teams worked well together. The full team consisted of about twenty members between the two companies, and Namco had allocated a budget of about (about at the time of production) for the game; this was about the tenth of the cost of budget allocated for Namco's blockbuster titles such as Ridge Racer or Soulcalibur. The full game took a year and a half to develop, with eight months of prototyping from the Digital Hollywood version. Takahashi said that the team was aiming for four key points in developing the game: novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humor. Iwatani compared the game to Namco's Pac-Man, which focused on simplicity and innovation and served as a template for future games from the company. At one point during development, Takahashi "proactively ignored" advice from Namco to increase the complexity of the game. The core gameplay of Katamari Damacy is the subject of U.S. Patent 7,402,104, "Game performing method, game apparatus, storage medium, data signal and program". The patent, issued in 2009, primarily describes how the game maintains the roughly spherical nature of the katamari when objects are picked up, though extends to concepts such as tracking objects collected based on temperature or weight values, which were modes included with later games of the series. Music The music in Katamari Damacy was widely hailed as imaginative and original (winning both IGN's and GameSpot's "Soundtrack of the Year 2004" awards) and was considered one of the game's best features. The soundtrack was released in Japan as Katamari Fortissimo Damacy. Its eclectic composition featured elements of traditional electronic video game music, as well as heavy jazz and samba influences (Shibuya-kei). Most of the tracks were composed by Yuu Miyake, and many feature vocals from popular J-pop singers, such as Yui Asaka from the Sukeban Deka 3 TV series, and anime voice actors, including Nobue Matsubara and Ado Mizumori. One track is sung and written by Charlie Kosei, composer of the Lupin III soundtrack. Release A single-level demonstration of the final