Pap the Disney
Gamer Presents a Year Long
Celebration

Ten Years of Hearts, Keyblades
and Disney Magic: A Kingdom
Hearts 10thAnniversary
Celebration
Last time on the
Kingdom Hearts Retrospective
'Wow, a sword
shaped like a key! Let's us go
to Wonderland, Neverland, the
jungle, Agrabah and more!'
And now...
Part 12: A
Legacy
During this
retrospective, I have talked
about the overall Kingdom Hearts
experience. From the creators
involved, the influence from the
Disney mythos, the story,
characters, and gameplay
mechanics to the Disney
references and how effective it
was in telling classic Disney
stories through its own
narrative. For the very last
entry of this retrospective, I
decided to talk about two very
important aspects of Kingdom
Hearts: my memories of the game
and its overall legacy.
To quote Sophia
Petrillo from The Golden
Girls...
Picture it,
Puerto Rico, 2002. I was
experiencing my second year of
college, and despite the
difficulties one would expect
out of college life and the
world around me, I was having a
blast. At home, I had the very
awesome GameCube and the cool
PlayStation 2 with some
excellent games, along with
friends to play them with. I
couldn't have asked for a better
life then. And yet, there was
something that was always there,
but I kept it hidden well within
my heart: my love for all things
Disney.

Little did I know that this
little system would harvest some
of the best Disney memories ever
I am sure most
of you know what I am talking
about when I say that many of us
go through a phase in our lives
in which we drop the things that
we loved as kids in favor of
something more 'mature' and
relevant to our age. For me,
that thing was Disney. Only, I
never really dropped my love for
Disney. I still watched the
movies, played the games, tuned
into the Disney Channel every
once in a while, listened to 'A
Whole New World' endlessly among
other things. It's just that
with college life still being so
cool in my mind, my focus lied
on everything else that seemed
far more engaging, interesting,
and significantly life changing.

In 2001, Kingdom Hearts was
still in its beta phase, meaning
that a great deal of it, the
logo included, would undergo
various changes before release
I remember the
first time I caught glimpse of
Kingdom Hearts... It was in
during the 2001 Electronic
Entertainment Expo (or E3 as it
is widely known). In that year,
the Nintendo GameCube was fully
shown off for the first time,
same with the Xbox from
Microsoft and a lot more games.
Square Enix (back then known as
Squaresoft) released the very
first and very early trailer for
Kingdom Hearts. My impression
upon first viewing was... boy
was that DUMB! I mean, you had
these kids with big heads, silly
hair, clown shoes and weird
accessories running around
killing shadows with Donald and
Goofy, and even Dumbo showed up!
What else was there to make of
it? So I ignored its development
completely, Nintendo's Super
Smash Bros. Melee being the game
that captured my attention.
I was, however,
taking a very closer look at
everything else Square did. At
the time, I was into their main
series, Final Fantasy, a love
which started way back in 1999
when I first played Final
Fantasy VII on the PC (it came
out on the PlayStation first in
1997, though). Needless to say,
I loved this game to pieces,
flaws and all. I then followed
it with Final Fantasy VI, VIII,
IX and X, which created a deep
appreciation towards all things
Final Fantasy. What I didn't
know then, though, that it was
all a preparation for the things
coming my way.
With me enjoying
Square's efforts so much, I
decided to keep tabs on their
game development. That's when I
stumbled once again into Kingdom
Hearts, a game I completely
brushed off earlier in 2001. By
this point, the game has
advanced greatly in its
development, allowing a Japanese
site to go up in its honor that
had a lot of details regarding
the game.
Back in 2001
when I saw the game, I didn't
know that you could visit
various Disney worlds and meet
the characters. That was hook
number one for me. When I saw
that The Nightmare Before
Christmas had a world to
call its own, my curiosity grew
stronger in size. Hook number
two were the summons. As I
mentioned in an earlier entry,
you can summon the likes of
Simba and Dumbo at any time.
Hook number three was the
appearance of Final Fantasy
characters.
'That's it!' - I
said to myself. I HAD to know
more about this game and tell my
friends about it. And that I
did, and most gave me weird
looks. 'A Disney-RPG where you
can meet Disney Princesses AND
Final Fantasy characters? How
could THAT be any good?'- most
of them replied. But even with
all of that, I still followed
its development till the very
day of its American release.
Note that this was before the
days of YouTube, so video
footage of the game was very
limited to what game sites had
to offer.

Fun fact: On the same day that I
picked my copy of the game, I
picked up the latest issue of
the Official PlayStation
Magazine, which featured this
image as its cover. The magazine
gave the game a glowing review
and praised its story and
characters
September 2002
finally came around, and after
saving up for the game I picked
it up during its release week.
Needless to say, my first time
playing the game was nothing
short of magical. From the
minute Utada Hikaru's 'Simple
and Clean' starting playing I
knew that this was going to be
one of my favorite games ever.
Unfortunately, I had class later
that day, and class the next
morning so I didn't get to play
it 24 hours straight.
However, play it
I did. No other game has
captured my attention in the
same manner as Kingdom Hearts.
It was one of the few games I
replayed what seemed hundreds of
times from beginning to end. I
leveled up Sora till level 100,
beat all the secret bosses, got
all the Keyblades and even went
as far as to record the cut
scenes on a VHS tape so I could
watch the game like a movie
(again, this was before YouTube
was around and no one had edited
the cut scenes into one
convenient movie).
Yet, above all
of that, Kingdom Hearts did one
thing that I am thankful for to
this day: inspire and wake up
the near dormant Disney fan in
me. Like I said, I still loved
Disney, but it was Kingdom
Hearts that reminded me that it
was an integral part of my life
and my personality. It shaped my
childhood into something worth
remembering despite its ups and
downs. So effective was Kingdom
Hearts that after I beat it I
would go to the video store
after school and rent many
Disney movies on VHS, and got me
to invest on several Disney
DVDs, too.

In my circle of
online friends, I quickly became
known as the rabid Kingdom
Hearts fan due to my enthusiasm
with it. I couldn't get enough
of it. I wanted more... and more
I got. Just a year after I had
played Kingdom Hearts they
announced not one but TWO
Kingdom Hearts games: Kingdom
Hearts: Chain of Memories for
the Game Boy Advance and Kingdom
Hearts II for the PlayStation 2.
I was actually in the school's
computer lab when I read the
news online and I YELLED in
extreme happiness. I wanted to
see the story continue, I wanted
to see more of the characters, I
wanted to see more Disney movies
turned into worlds. I just
wanted to return to Kingdom
Hearts again and again...
And now here we
are, 10 years later. I got my
wish of more Kingdom Hearts
games. Since its release in
2002, Kingdom Hearts has become
a third pillar franchise for
Square Enix after Final Fantasy
and Dragon Quest. Admittedly,
the novelty of a Disney RPG has
waned. But what hasn't waned is
the desire to see the story grow
and evolve. Both Chain of
Memories and Kingdom Hearts II
confirmed that the first game
was just a tease of what we
could expect out of the story.
It has since become a complex
web of betrayal, faith, light,
and darkness. We have gone to
the past of Kingdom Hearts to
see how it all began in Birth by
Sleep, we have seen what events
happened in between Kingdom
Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, we
cleared up character motivations
and why they act the way they
do... and there are still many
questions waiting to be
answered.
The biggest
question of all is... when is
Kingdom Hearts III coming? Yes,
we have seven games in the
series, and yet none of them
have the number 3 at the end.
That is because the original
Kingdom Hearts development team
is hard at work at a Final
Fantasy XIII game that,
unfortunately, has not seen the
light of day since some footage
was released. It has been said
that the innovations they
created in that game will be
seen in Kingdom Hearts III, but
again development has seen delay
after delay, and no release
seems to be in sight.
This leaves fans
speculating about what we can
expect out of Kingdom Hearts
III. Tetsuya Nomura has stated
in several interviews that
Kingdom Hearts III will see the
end of the now dubbed 'Xenahort
Saga,' and every game that has
been released have been created
to fill in the spaces left by
the main games in the series,
promising to deliver a powerful
conclusion to the saga that has
been in the making for 10 years.
When will it happen? No one
really knows.
Nintendo's Wii U
system was released last
November, kicking off the next
generation of games. People
expect both Microsoft and Sony
to reveal their newest systems
next year. The question in
everyone's mind is: will any
continuation of the Kingdom
Hearts saga see release in any
of these new systems? Will the
game finally be the conclusion
people have been waiting for, or
will it just be another chapter
that both raises and answers
questions? Once again, people
don't have an answer for that,
except the folks at Square Enix.
This goes to
show just how far Kingdom Hearts
has come since 2001, when
everyone and their mother
thought that this was a dumb
idea, much like how in the 30s
when Walt Disney was producing
Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs, they called it
'Disney's folley.' But also like
Snow White, Kingdom Hearts,
flaws and all, went on to
impress many people in the
industry. It came out at the
right time when video game
technology was blooming into
what we see today, utilizing
some of the best technology ever
along with the perfect
combination of artists,
designers and musicians. Kingdom
Hearts was a project that was
unique for the Disney company
and has forever made its
presence known in the industry.
In other words,
this is why I write Gamer
Tuesday: video games can be
enriching methods of
storytelling. It is still a very
rough way of storytelling, video
game companies still have ways
to learn, but as Kingdom Hearts
proved, when done right it can
engage people in the best way
possible. Disney has more than
an amazing presence in pop
culture. Even with people
lobbying against them, Disney
simply knows how to tell a story
and make it permanent in the
minds of many. New Fantasyland
at the Magic Kingdom is an
excellent example of that. Video
games can have that kind of
legacy, and when combined with
Disney's characters and story,
something worth remembering will
happen. That's why I believe
Kingdom Hearts stands as one of
the best examples of how Disney
and video games can further push
the ideas both industries can
create.
After all of
what I've said in the last year,
the only thing left to say is...
Happy 10th
anniversary, Kingdom Hearts!
Thank you Square Enix for
believing in such an oddball
project. Thank you Disney
Interactive for letting Square
create something under your
label that more than lives up to
the high standards people have
towards Disney. And most
importantly, thank you to ALL
the men and women involved in
the creation of Kingdom Hearts,
whose hard work and
determination created one of the
most memorable Disney video
games of the last decade.

Thank you all
for joining me on this Kingdom
Hearts retrospective. It wasn't
an easy journey, but it was a
journey worth taking. Hope it
was as fun for you as it was for
me.