Kingdom hearts is arguably the biggest IP to come out of japan for quite some time, and many regard it higher than square enix's flagship franchise, Final Fantasy. Created by the ever vibrant Tetsuya Nomura and featuring Disney characters and worlds in unison with past Final Fantasy characters, Kingdom Hearts has literally charmed the hearts of gamers since its initial release on the PlayStation 2, in 2002.
To date, Kingdom Hearts has sold over 20 million copies across all its titles, a franchise that has now given us 10 games! So who do we owe our huge gratitude to for making this all a reality? I suppose at the forefront of it all, we all assume its Tetsuya Nomura, although true and he is the games director and all around designer, we firstly must mention Shinji Hashimoto, a Square game producer, he had discussed the possibility of creating a Super Mario 64 style of game, with Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy! This project essentially amounted to nothing as they felt it was never going to hit the heights of Mario, as he was already an established star in gaming. The two joked it'd take something as big as Disney and its huge cast of iconic characters to really work out!
Well one day Hashimoto spoke personally with a top executive from Disney, of course he might joke this was by chance, I'm thinking two geniuses likely head hunted the right guy to approach and nailed their pitch! Square and Disney at this stage in time worked in the same building in Japan. Hashimoto presented his ideas to Disney directly. The rest is history. And development began in February 2000 with Hashimoto serving as producer and of course Tetsuya Nomura at the helm!
An interesting thing most don't know about, is how the name kingdom hearts came about! It was originally inspired by Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida. Nomura continued to develop the story around the theme of the characters’ hearts, so they simply decided to merge the two names together to create what we all love and adore today, Kingdom Hearts!
So, today I write this blog to run a quick retrospective covering the series to date, all the way up to Kingdom Hearts 3. We have literally just learned that they are switching to the unreal engine 4. Now that sounds quite alarming on paper, but toward the end of my blog I'll give my views on this, and how it isn't as disastrous as you might have first assumed.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blog and enjoy thinking back to your memories from past plays, why not put some kingdom hearts music on while you're here, maybe Utada Hikaru's passion/sanctuary. This obviously contains huge spoilers, if you haven't played a game listed, by all means, skip it! I sit here listening to sanctuary as I write this, it really makes me feel nostalgic thinking back, I've so many awesome memories literally linked to this game, past friends I no longer talk to who I shared many hours playing and discussing kingdom hearts with. So I guess I'll crack on with my rundown of the series as I understand it, I hope this inspires you guys to play past titles or just sit back and reminisce while we wait for 2.5HD and kingdom hearts 3.
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (2010) - PSP / 1.99 Million
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This is where the story of kingdom hearts begins. Taking place 10 years before the Heartless invasion of Destiny Islands. It was a very well received title, scoring high reviews all around and generally a pleasure to play.
The story focuses on Xehanort. The series' main villain. However, he was once young and like sora, had aspirations of leaving his island and doing something much bigger than living out each day. He spent all his time in researching history, thus leading him to learn about kingdom hearts and the keyblade war.
The keyblade was created to protect the light coming from kingdom hearts, long ago people believed all light originated from kingdom hearts itself. The keyblade and kingdom hearts itself had massive power, power which people would eventually go to war over. This war, the key blade war, resulted in the keyblade being broken into many different parts, 13 of darkness and 7 of light! Kingdom hearts had been swallowed by darkness and the light from children's hearts was all that was left.
Xehanort continued to study this history and trained in the arts of wielding the keyblade, in order to become a keyblade master, alongside his friend Eraqus. Xehanort's plan was to rebuild the x-blade, the ultimate keyblade. By starting a new keyblade war, he felt a fresh and new universe would be created. However, conflicting views from Eraqus made this difficult, Xehanort never achieved hid goal.
Eventually, Xehanort would meet a young boy named Ventas. He had hoped by training vent as the ways of the darkness, that his plans would continue even through his old age. However, Ventas refused to succumb to the darkness, forcing Xehanort to amass all of his evil and darkness into a truly evil being, Vanitas was born!
Ventas was not alone however, two other students named Aqua and Terra, joined him on his journey to and eventually to defeat Xehanort, the trio travel to many different Disney worlds and meet Mickey Mouse, who at this stage is a young apprentice of the sorcerer Yen Sid. Mickey also aids the students in the battle against Xehanort. While Xehanort’s main plan is thwarted, he does manage to kill his old friend Eraqus and also merge with the body of Terra, eventually allowing him to transform into a much younger version of himself.
This younger Xehanort is discovered by Ansem the Wise, a scholar who does experiments regarding the effects of light and darkness on hearts and is taken on as an apprentice. Xehanort’s research is thus allowed to continue. Ventas’s heart manages to survive and returns to Ventas’s original home of Destiny Islands where it merges with a young boy, who you guessed it, was Sora who Ventas felt a connection to, likely his pure heart, while visiting the islands earlier in the game!
Kingdom Hearts 1 (2002) - PlayStation 2 / Sold: 6.4 Million
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It all begins here, at least in terms of when we first played kingdom hearts. It of course takes place 10 years after birth by sleep, I think it was the weight of importance the square Enix logo had on me as a child that made this one to play asap. I had no knowledge on the game, I was already an avid final fantasy fan, and this seemed to fit the bill for something I'd enjoy. And I was right, a stunning game and the start of something very special indeed! Literally from the opening scene I was hooked.
Our journey begins with three children , Sora, Riku and Kairi. They live on Destiny Islands with a few rather familiar faces from past final fantasy games, Wakka, selphie and tidus! Eventually however, just as sora plans to go on his own adventure, the islands are attacked by heartless and darkness is set to totally consume this world.
All is not lost, sora has been chosen by the keyblade, he can wield the keyblade and sets out to free the universe from darkness! Sora eventually ends up in Traverse Town, where he would meet Disneys Donald Duck and Goofy! Not before bumping heads with Pluto of course! They have been sent to find Sora and aid him in his journey, by order of king mickey! King mickey has set out to learn more and further fight back against the heartless.
Sora, Donald and Goofy then travel to many different Disney-themed worlds, using the Keyblade to lock the world’s keyholes in order to prevent the world from being taken over by Heartless. It turns out that a cast of Disney villains led by Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty are using the Heartless to capture Disney princesses. These “Princesses of Heart” can be exploited to open the door to a magical place called “Kingdom Hearts” which will allow the evil villains to rule over all of the worlds. The trio beat Maleficent only to find –in the first of many plot twists – that the Disney villain was actually being controlled by a guy named Ansem. (who is actually Xehanort). Ansem plans to open Kingdom Hearts himself and use it to rain eternal darkness down on everything.
Along the way, Sora finds Riku and very briefly, Kairi, but things aren’t the same as before because Anselm had been controlling Riku as the dark wealder of the keyblade! Sora temporarily uses the power of his own heart to save Kairi and the princesses of heart and is temporarily turned into a Heartless himself until Kairi’s love brings him back.
Just as Ansem is about to complete his master plan, Sora, Donald and Goofy defeat him and manage to seal the door to Kingdom Hearts. But uh oh, Sora and Kairi are on opposite sides of the door as it gets sealed!
Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories (2004) - Gameboy Advanced/ PS3 1.5 HD / 1.85 Million
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This game, originally released for the Game Boy Advance and recently part of the remastered final mix collection on PS3, it takes place directly after the ending of the first game. Sora, Donald and Goofy set out on the Kingdom Hearts side of the door to find Riku and King Mickey who are locked in there with them. They find a massive place called Castle Oblivion and end up inside.
The trio then meets the members of a group called Organization XIII. A group of Nobodies. Nobodies are created when a strong person gets turned into a Heartless. The Nobody is essentially what is left behind and the Nobody has no recollection of his or her previous life before their heart was taken. As the trio fight through the castle, their memories are manipulated by a girl named Namine who is being controlled by one of the XIII. They once again have to progress through the same Disney worlds from the first game. After reaching the top of the castle, Namine puts the three to sleep for a year to allow them to regain their true memories.
It is then revealed that Riku and the King are in the basement of the castle and need to fight their way to the first floor. Riku was corrupted by the darkness in his heart during the first game and so he does battle with Organization members as well as the darkness within him. Riku also runs into a man named DiZ who helps him during his journey.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (2009) - Nintendo DS / PS3 HD Remaster (Cinematics) / 1.94 Million
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Another handheld title, this time for the Nintendo DS. Quite a confusing title, right? Well, it refers to the year that Sora and his friends were asleep and the events that took place during that year but there are also events that are concurrent with Chain of Memories.
The game tells the story of Roxas, who is Sora’s Nobody. Basically, when Sora turned into a Heartless to save Kairi in Kingdom hearts 1, Roxas was the result!
Roxas is a member of Organization XIII and has no recollection of his previous life as Sora. Roxas engages In his own self-contained story, using his own Keyblade to defeat Heartless across many worlds. The Nobodies of Organization XIII want to use the collected hearts from battles to become whole human beings again. Along the way, Roxas runs into Xion, who is the organization’s 14th member. It turns out that the leader of the Organization created Xion as a fail-safe for Roxas. Xion is essentially a Nobody version of Kairi, created from Sora’s memories. If Sora is ever going to wake up, Xion has to merge back with Sora, but that would mean she would no longer exist. This is actually a pretty sad sequence of events! Poor Xion :(
Xion is manipulated by Xemnas, the Organization’s leader, and Roxas has to eventually fight Xion. After her defeat, Xion merges with Sora, causing everyone’s memories of Xion to disappear. Finally, Riku manages to capture Roxas, on advice from DiZ. Riku captures Roxas by releasing the darkness within him, which causes Riku to take the physical form of Ansem, one of the things that he fears most. DiZ places Roxas in Twilight Town with no recollection of what happened in 358/2 Days so that he can eventually merge again with Sora, causing Sora to wake up. This leads to… you guessed it, Kingdom Hearts 2!
Continue to part 2 - http://n4g.com/blogs/detail...
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Very enjoyable read, well done.