The weirdest thing just happened to me in multi-player.

I was hosting a match on the Street level and it was pretty typical. 3 players, maybe a little under halfway through the match, I was ahead by a decent amount, but not too much. I've just avoided a guy, and I'm trying to roll up onto the dock area from the river (the area where the boat is usually placed in single-player). Suddenly, the whole screen goes gray, then fades to white, and I get the lag symbol flashing a couple times. I got a little angry, thinking I'd lose the cookies I hadn't saved. Then it happened:

The King's head pops up on the screen and says something to the effect of "Behold the Royal Warp, hereforeto unseen by humans" or whatever. My "katamari" has now been dropped in the bend of the river, except now it's completely invisible. I can still see the crown on top of it, and I can still see tiny little Harvest pushing it, but the katamari disappeared. I didn't lose any of the people playing, and they continued to roll, since I saw tallies going up. Every time I rolled something up, it would disappear too. I didn't see anyone else's katamari for the rest of the match, but it's possible I just avoided them. They weren't talkers, so I didn't hear any chatter about how weird it was, and I try to stay silent unless someone's talking to me so I don't anger anyone into quitting. It's possible I'm the only one who couldn't see the katamaris, but it didn't seem like a glitch. The King's head actually popped up and delivered a message like I had picked up a cousin, except to explain to me that I had just seen "The Royal Warp" instead. Never in all the time I've played multiplayer have I seen anything like that.

Luckily for me, I didn't lose any cookies, and I just passed 5000 to move up into the 30s on the Cookie Leaderboard.

Royal Warp has been around since the first katamari game (it's the game's butt-cover for glitches where the katamari falls through the ground), but not like that! Normally after the Royal Warp you're placed back in the playing field normally, everything visible and all.

I've been Royal Warped twice in this game. Once I tried to fit into a microwave oven in Roller Roaster and it happened (I've tried to reproduce it but haven't been able to), and once very recently Seamonky rolled me up in House and when I jumped off I fell out of the course. But both times everything was normal afterwards.

You had a strange experience all right!

Same thing happened to me!!! :woot

Now I know I'm Not Crazy!!!!!! :heh

Edit: I never experienced it before... so I was confused

It surprises me how many bugs they DON'T have in this game, given all the things that can go wrong. Hats off to the Japanese -- them guys can CODE. They should have an achievement for this, though. That would be subtle.

While we're on the subject of royal warps. I just got my first royal warp on Friday in WLK! :D

Yeah, just imagine the possibilities of bugs. They did a good job, the coders are always under appreciated.

I have only had a royal warp in a multiplayer game once...then everyone quit.

I get them in normal mode prob once in every 100 or so rounds.

It is true ... katamari games are remarkably free of bugs. It sure seems like a lot of things could go wrong. We might all enjoy trying early development copies of the games :D

The Speed Demos Archive people love taking advantage of faulty programming in their speedruns, but that hasn't happened so far in any katamari game ... which might be part of why katamari games aren't very popular to run at SDA :(

By the way, Maritimus Rain, that's great you've moved so far up the cookie leaderboard. I'm in 850th place or so :heh

I never checked my position in the cookie boards...I would imagine I'm really really low...I got my 1000, helped ktgogators get a few rounds worth of cookies and havent played since.